So, aftermarket alloys...

[otolith]

We've bust an alloy and a new 15 inch Mazda OEM wheel is 140 quid. The other three wheels on the car are a bit tatty, and SWMBO is not averse to the idea of getting some new wheels. We'd want to stick to the same size, and there's a huge choice of fairly inexpensive wheels on the market, starting from about 200 quid a set. My only concern is that they may be excessively heavy - I'm not looking for the ultimate in minimal unsprung weight, but nor do I want to ruin the car. How much is it necessary to spend to get something acceptable?

[otolith]

I can get one matching wheel from the Mazda dealer (or from MX-5 parts, they've just got back to me) for 140 quid. I can get four 15 inch OEM alloys of either of two different designs from MX-5 Parts for 300-320 quid. Or I can get four non-OEM wheels for anything from 200 quid upwards.

Replacing one for £140 and spending £120-£180 on refurbing the other three doesn't seem like very good value, to be honest, particularly given that there is a good chance the council can wriggle out of paying - I think we have to proceed on the assumption that we're going to pay for this ourselves and treat any recompense as a bonus. It's also the wife's daily driver, so this needs sorting ASAP.

These are the alternative OEM ones - are they going to be substantially inferior to the ones we've got? Are they going to be substantially superior to aftermarket ones for similar money?

http://www.mx5parts.co.uk/product_info.php/product...

http://www.mx5parts.co.uk/product_info.php/product...

[otolith]

The insurance isn't an issue - I've just checked, and it would add a tenner a year to the policy. It's really an issue of whether they would be excessively heavy.

[otolith]

maz8062 said:

otolith said:

The insurance isn't an issue - I've just checked, and it would add a tenner a year to the policy. It's really an issue of whether they would be excessively heavy.

I'm not really sure what advice you are looking for. If you are looking to buy brand new, only, please say so that advice can be limited to new alloys only.

I'd consider used - I just want to look at all my options and weigh up the pros and cons.

So, I've got -

• Directly replace the broken one with a brand new wheel - £140 (and then perhaps refurb the other three at 40-80 quid a shot)
• Directly replace the broken one with a used wheel - unlikely to find one
• Replace all of them with used OEM wheels of a different pattern - £200
• Replace all of them with new OEM wheels of a different pattern - £300
• Replace all of them with new aftermarket wheels - ???
• Replace all of them with used aftermarket wheels - ???

So what I would like to determine is:

• The necessary value of ??? in order to have something at least as good as the wheels that came with the car (or near enough that I won't notice)

• Whether the OEM wheels I linked to on the MX5 parts site are as good as what the car has as standard.

The car is an Arizona, the part number for the original wheel is 9965l-06050, and it looks like this:

[otolith]

Ah, thanks - so the Enkeis are particularly light. OK.

[otolith]

Just to finish this off, and thank everyone for their help. After much discussion, we decided on these:



They're lighter than the old OEM wheels, they were only £215 and (probably most importantly) the wife really likes them.

[otolith]

maz8062 said:

They look very nice, but it always makes me laugh when peeps ask for advice yet do their own thing anyway. You were right all along

Nah, I needed the information from this thread to narrow down my requirements - specifically, how light a wheel I was going to need to find not to be worse off than where we started. I was tempted by the offer of the 1.8iS 5 spokes, but the wife wasn't - too similar to the existing wheels. The other options were just too expensive.

[otolith]

matt uk said:

They look good! What are they?

These

Not the most fashionable of brands, they seem to have slipped from the top of the price range to the bottom, but they're nice and light and they look OK to me. Not exactly JDM, either, but then it is a pastiche of a British car, so perhaps a British alloy isn't so inappropriate