Hi,
I came home last night to a pleasant surprise. When I pulled in my
driveway, I noticed a large box on my doorstep. Seeing that I hadn't
actually ordered anything for months, I was quite surprised.
As I approached, I noticed two key bits of information, Made in Japan and
15x7 JJ. Kewl - a new pair of Panasport Lights for the race car. I quickly
whisked the box inside for a look-see.
Once the box was opened, the packing removed, you could read the words
"for racing use only". Oh, yeah! I pulled one of the wheels out for closer
examination. These are very nice wheels.
The only surprise was the weight. These are high quality wheels, but they
do weight about 16 pounds each, maybe a tad more. The packing list
indicated a total weight of the shipping container was 37 pounds. That
works out to 18.5 pounds per wheel, but the wheels are packed very well
and there's probably at least two pounds of packing cardboard. So the
wheels are between 16 and 16.5 pounds each.
I was hoping for wheels a bit lighter, but these will be plenty strong and
barring a chance meeting with an immovable object should provide years of
service.
In my exhuberance, I ran out to the garage and mounted both wheels to the
respective hubs front and rear. No clearance issues, although the
suspension is at full droop (the car is on stands so I can pull off
everything to check for cracks). Awesome. I was concerned because I
ordered "zero offset" so the effective track is a tad narrower than the
wheels that I'll be replacing (three-piece Revolution 5-spokes) - the Revs
had an offset in the .5" range.
It turns out that when I had talked to the vendor (Mid-Atlantic
Motorsports, aka Hoosier Tom) he had ordered the wheels and drop-shipped
'em to my house. As a courtesy, I called Tom and told him the wheels were
received. I should be getting an invoice in a few days.
These wheels are not cheap (I don't know the actual cost, but it will be
in the $250 per wheel range) but they are very nice wheels. I had to have
some machining done to accomodate my Corvair hub centering lugs and that
added to the cost by probably $10 or $20 a wheel. But these are keepers.
I just thought I'd share the joy. Next on the agenda - a new set of
slicks. OOOOooooohhhhh.
:-)
rml
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