Forged Rays Volk Wheels installed - stock wheels are HEAVY!

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The preproduction car had 16" wheels, the same castings as on the production car except with a spun finish on the face.

As far as lowering the car I am looking at several options and have the attention of K-Sport and they are working on getting some hardware together for a test fitting on my car.

As far as the Miata, thanks. It is running on Ohlins DFV coilovers along with many mods to put it to the limits of the STR class for SCCA Auto-x.

As far as the aero differences you will not notice it much at all at in-town speeds. Plus they are not sticking out like roller skate wheels; the vast majority of the tire is still within the frontal bumper area. You would have to sustain higher freeway speeds to begin to maybe see a difference. And at that point a boundary layer will be coming from the nose of the car and the wheels/tires will be in a stagnant air area anyway. Not to mention the air around the wheel wells will be turbulent to start with due to a spinning wheel. If you want to truly help aerodynamics around the wheels then you need full moon covers. Aerodynamics is kind of my thing as I am an Aerospace Engineer.

There will be no camber adjustments as it is a beam axle. You would need camber bolts or adjustable lower arms in order to adjust front camber after lowering. The max camber I would want for a street car would be around 1 degree negative. I imagine that lowering it 1.5"-2" would yield a negative camber in that range or less. I will have to see once I go down that path.
 
Skywagon said:
The preproduction car had 16" wheels, the same castings as on the production car except with a spun finish on the face.
I've looked at a number of other pics of the preprod show car, and if you look carefully you can make out a 17 in the tire size. I'm pretty sure it's a 17" wheel/tire with like a 205/50 tire. See this pic, for example:
http://www.automoblog.net/2010/02/06/2011-nissan-leaf-electric-car-driven/2011-nissan-leaf-wheel/

Skywagon said:
As far as lowering the car I am looking at several options and have the attention of K-Sport and they are working on getting some hardware together for a test fitting on my car.
Sweet!

Skywagon said:
Not to mention the air around the wheel wells will be turbulent to start with due to a spinning wheel. If you want to truly help aerodynamics around the wheels then you need full moon covers. Aerodynamics is kind of my thing as I am an Aerospace Engineer.
I was wondering who'd be the first to install moon covers on their wheels... :)

Skywagon said:
There will be no camber adjustments as it is a beam axle.
There are shims you can get to adjust the toe/camber on the rear axle. They go in between the hub/axle.

Skywagon said:
The max camber I would want for a street car would be around 1 degree negative. I imagine that lowering it 1.5"-2" would yield a negative camber in that range or less. I will have to see once I go down that path.
Good target - although on my street driven WRX I run about 1.25-1.5 and don't get any extra inside wear though it does tend to wander slightly more.
 
Wow, those 18s look great on the Leaf, and I'm not one of those people that normally likes that look. (For instance, I don't particularly like how those 18s looked on the Miata. Too big.) Something about the Leaf's fender design seems to make the wheels look smaller than one would expect.

Sadly, I suppose that super low-profile tires might not be a good match for the Leaf. (Might add noise and harshness that would be really easy to hear, and I don't suppose low-rolling-resistance tires come in that size.)

Oh! Speaking of noise, my MINI came with 23 lb. run-flat tires, mounted on 26 lb. (16") wheels. Crazy heavy. I replaced them with 19 lb. tires, mounted on (17") 12.5 lb. wheels. Huge weight difference. One drawback that I noticed immediately was that road noise (tire noise over rough surfaces) was dramatically increased. Doubled, easily. This has persisted through several sets of new tires, some purchased for their known quietness, so I'm guessing that it's largely due to either the lighter wheels, or the non-runflat tires.

I'd be interested to know if the OP notices any difference in road noise. The Leaf is an ideal platform to test that sort of thing.
 
Hey Skywagon

Love the pic, what size are are those wheels again? 18x ??? I was just wondering because I have a buddy who has a set Volks in 18x9's in +30mm offset. Don't have the Leaf yet so I have nothing to compare it to.


Skywagon said:
Also, when I dropped off the wheels and tires to be swapped over I put a set of 18" Rays Forged wheels on the LEAF that I have for my Mazda (just for storage in my shop/hangar, did not drive on them)... it looked so strange/funny that I took a photo (ignore the camera phone quality):

5577284682_f8acbb381f_z.jpg


Just thought some might want to see those as well as they are still 5 lbs less than the stock wheels, but the increased size and tire width would hurt the efficiency/range over the stock wheels.
 
Is there a trend of improved efficiency showing up as a result of this upgrade? I know you were expecting 5-8%, but can you estimate that you've had any improvement?
 
I know you didn't like the 18's but I think they could really work... the car needs to be 1-1.5" lower though.
 
18x9's would be massive and would surely stick out. Not to mention the likelyhood of rubbing the fenders and or strut. With some aggressive lowering and camber it would look pretty cool though.
 
As far as the 18's, if you want to decrease your acceleration and efficiency then go right ahead.

As far as the replacement wheels, I have only put 600 miles on the car but I am seeing a shift in my range over time of about 4-6%. I will need more data points to further validate this. The other benefits are turn-in and composure in the turns. The 1/2" wider wheels change the angle of the sidewalls just enough to reduce the rolling over of the tire. Also, the 40mm wider track helps with stability, without running wider tires and losing efficiency.

As far as lowering the car, that is in work and I hope to have a solution soon.
 
palmermd said:
Is there a trend of improved efficiency showing up as a result of this upgrade? I know you were expecting 5-8%, but can you estimate that you've had any improvement?

To be scientific about it, gather data on the new rims for several months, then pop in the original rims and compare.. he would be a hero to the Leaf community after going thru all this trouble.. in any case there must be a reason GM is using light forged aluminum wheels in the Volt and Cruze Eco models.
 
Skywagon said:
As far as the 18's, if you want to decrease your acceleration and efficiency then go right ahead.

As far as the replacement wheels, I have only put 600 miles on the car but I am seeing a shift in my range over time of about 4-6%. I will need more data points to further validate this. The other benefits are turn-in and composure in the turns. The 1/2" wider wheels change the angle of the sidewalls just enough to reduce the rolling over of the tire. Also, the 40mm wider track helps with stability, without running wider tires and losing efficiency.

As far as lowering the car, that is in work and I hope to have a solution soon.
Very good information! Please update when you have more info re. efficiency (and suspension, maybe in a new thread).
 
Skywagon said:
As far as the replacement wheels, I have only put 600 miles on the car but I am seeing a shift in my range over time of about 4-6%.
Actually, I was updating the wiki and realized that "shift" can mean "for the better" or "for the worse". It's highly likely that you meant "for the better". I find difficult to believe that a lighter wheel/tire combo would worsen efficiency, and because later, you also said "...and losing efficiency". But, in a Quixotic effort to not add noise to the Internet :D , I just want to doublecheck: you did mean "for the better", correct?
 
aqn said:
Skywagon said:
As far as the replacement wheels, I have only put 600 miles on the car but I am seeing a shift in my range over time of about 4-6%.
Actually, I was updating the wiki and realized that "shift" can mean "for the better" or "for the worse". It's highly likely that you meant "for the better". I find difficult to believe that a lighter wheel/tire combo would worsen efficiency, and because later, you also said "...and losing efficiency". But, in a Quixotic effort to not add noise to the Internet :D , I just want to doublecheck: you did mean "for the better", correct?

Yes, for the better. I felt that was clear when I stated that 18" wheels/tires would decrease range and that was not my intentions. This is not the only vehicle I have gone to lighter wheels with in the past in order to increase efficiency; and will not be the last as OEM's do not opt for, typically expensive, lightweight forged wheels unless they are a special ($$$$) model.
 
Im glad there is a wheel thread ,Im changing mine with in a few months of receiving the car..
 
I finally found some nice machined aluminum Rays center caps for these rare/older wheels. I am hoping to have a suspension set-up in the next couple months; I have a couple options in work. I will probably swap the lugs for chrome ones. Here are some updated photos:

5663139347_70e3c3a18d_b.jpg


5663138629_4a11b09263_b.jpg


5663141623_628c73a02b_b.jpg
 
nader said:
Did you happen to get hub bore measurements? 73.1mm I assume.

That is the hub bore on some aftermarket wheels. The LEAF has the standard Nissan hub bore size of 66.1mm. You will need hub spacer rings with almost all aftermarket wheels.
 
If you're interested in aftermarket wheels and perhaps some new lugnuts, here is a photo of a stock Leaf lugnut that shows the taper angle...

lugnut.jpg


Randy
 
greenleaf said:
IBELEAF said:
I have doubts that shaving off 40 pounds will have any noticeable benefit which is 0.02% weight difference from the overall car weight, but the wheels do look nice.
The wheels on a moving car have both linear momentum and angular momentum (more energy needed to accelerate). So saving 40 pounds off the wheels will provide more benefit than say lightening 40 pounds from trunk. The question of "how much better" is harder to quantify though.
greenleaf - you are partly correct ... but reduction in wheel weight is actually even better than linear. The formula relating to this (on some tire/wheel web sites) is described as an exponential factor. So, for those who'd pooh pooh reduction in wheel weight, they're really missing how great the benefit of energy savings is by dropping wheel weight. The difference of wheel weight IS easily noticeable, unless you're only talking about the difference between a couple/few ounces.
 
hill said:
So, for those who'd pooh pooh reduction in wheel weight, they're really missing how great the benefit of energy savings is by dropping wheel weight. The difference of wheel weight IS easily noticeable, unless you're only talking about the difference between a couple/few ounces.

So far no comparison tests were done, so paying $1k on a set of lighter rims that result even in hypothetical 4-6% improvement is not really worth IMHO. Also, has anyone compared rotational inertia on the stock wheels? I doubt and that might also give us answers why the stock whees are heavy.
 
Volk Racing has the CE28 Eco Drive Wheels for Hybrid cars. They have wheels specifically for the Prius and Civic Hybrid. I wonder if they will release one for the LEAF. These wheels seems to be around 11lbs depending on diameter.
 
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