All posts tagged wheels

19 inch Wheels Install, Bucket Seats and Window Tinting

Over the last two weekends, I did a few important changes to the Infiniti G35 coupe. The original coupe came with a set of 20 inch aftermarket wheels and tires (Figure 1). So I procured the original 19 inch Forged Rays (Figure 6) from a seller about a hundred miles away a few months ago for $450, through Craigslist, which was a bargain. As you can see in Figure 7 that the 19 inch wheels look pretty good too.

Moreover, I also procured a pair of reclining racing bucket seats (Figure 9) made by Procar by Scat for about $280 on Facebook Marketplace. However, someone pointed out that these were knockoffs so I did feel a bit cheated! :( Oh well! These seats were in a Chevrolet Chevelle, so at least the brackets and sliders that came with it can be sold for something, and they look original since the part numbers are engraved on them.

To make myself happy, I decided to get the windows tinted on the car. I had been waiting for a while and feeling lazy to get it done and this Memorial day weekend I paid about $275 to get it done. 20% tint on the driver and passenger windows (Figure 8a), and 5% tint on the rear windshield (Figure 8b) and the strip on the front windshield (Figure 8c).

New tires for the Porsche Boxster S

While swapping the winter wheels and tires back to summer wheels, I discovered my rear tires were really bald (Figure 1) on the inside portion. This meant the car had a bad alignment and it needed new tires.

I ended up getting new tires for the car as I had a TireRack gift card, and the prices of tires there were much cheaper.

For the Boxster with stock OEM wheels you need 205/50ZR17 (Figure 3) for the front wheels and 255/40ZR17 (Figure 4). I purchased the Riken Raptor ZR A/S (all season) tires with these specifications.

Winter Wheels on the Porsche Boxster S

From the 986forum.com, where you can find me as username vkmotorsports, I found a post (now removed) selling used Boxster 17” wheels with brand new Dunlop WinterMaxx tires (Figures 4 and 5) for $500 in Brooklyn, NY. This was a great deal considering the wheels had some scuffs but the tires were brand new and unused. The seller wanted to buy a Boxster, but did not end up buying one. He instead bought a 911. However, he had purchased these wheels and tires before he even bought the Boxster !!! Hilarious! That made it easy for me to get the whole package for $400 cash.

Mounting the Painted Wheels

The wheels that I had painted almost two months ago finally had the Dunlop Direzza III tires mounted on them. I had gotten it done at a local Mavis Discount Tire store for about $70.

However, I did not get them to mount the wheels on the Miata so that I could learn to do it myself. The reason I waited this long to get the wheels on was that I wanted to replace the brake pads and also buy a portable 20V DeWalt high torque impact wrench for about $250. But today I decided that it was time to mount the wheels and drive the car in those performance tires. Good weather makes you do that !

Without an impact wrench, you can use a 21mm deep socket, a socket extension, a breaker bar, a ratchet and a torque wrench to do the work. You also need a jack and jack stands, but since I have a mid-rise lift I used that. It took me about 2 hours to do this as it was the first time.

Painting the Wheels Red

The wheels I bought earlier were from different cars, and I wanted to paint them bright red to get a unique look on my silver Miata. It took about 12 hours of work spread across 3 days to get it done. In this post, I describe how to paint wheels at home for cheap.