I was curious on how much wheel weight ACTUALLY matters in the case of someone who only daily drives, so no track, no touge, the typical point a to point b, or highway, and at what point of the wheel weight difference would you actually notice a difference if any.

 

Doesn't matter a bit. Assuming we're talking about standard sizes that fit and are not made of concrete or lead. Might a lighter wheel cut your quarter mile by 0.001 second? Maybe. But for we mere mortals this is PII (Preoccupation with Inconsequential Increments). Skip the cheeseburgers at lunch and you can easily loose more weight.

-- Chuck

 

Heavier wheels do have an effect on things like mpg as well. Also ride quality can change depending on wheel weight.

 

Your car will look cooler on lighter wheels bc most of the coolest wheels are light.

That is the biggest benefit.

 

Go to a 16” oem wheel and tell me you don’t feel the 10 lb difference.

 

Thanks all for the replies, me and my buddy had quite the argument about this, i had to call in the experts lol

 

It depends on how sensitive you are and the roads themselves.
Going from AP1 smaller+heavier wheels to say CE28 in 16x8 would be noticeably lighter which you can feel in acceleration, cornering, and when the suspension has to travel.

You might also notice more tramlining and a change in MPG too. This is assuming same tire brand in a different size.

 

If this runs true to car tires as well as motorcycle tires, If you align the red or yellow dot on the tire to the valve stem, it will be close to balance. This is what the dot is there for. Funny how many tire stores don't know this.

 

Even on a track the difference in weight is minimal and hard to notice. Actually damned near impossible to notice by feel. People talking about how they can feel the difference on the street in terms of accel I think are just falling victim to the placebo effect

People seem to forget that the wheels are not free to accelerate at any speed. They are bound to the ground and are accelerating at the rate the entire system is. So all in all ,the weight of the wheel is a very small percentage of the overall acceleration. I saw a test where a guy tested two sets of wheels on an NSX. The lighter wheels were around 6 - 7 lbs lighter than the heavier wheels he tested. His 20 km/h to 100 km/h time dropped by a whopping .04 seconds with the light wheels.

On the street the most probable thing one will notice is when driving on rough roads. Less unsprung weight can reduce some harshness but I still do not think a person will actually notice this much difference.

A lot of lightweight wheels are also less durable as well.

But yeah, on the street you are not going to see any significant benefit. Dont stress yourself over it.

 

wheel diameter and weight make a difference, car and driver tested a vw golf with 15, 16, 17, 18 & 19 wheels, for every diameter increase in wheel size the car's acceleration numbers increased by a tenth of a second in 0 - 60 times and quarter mile times and trap speed. Fuel mileage also decreased