wheel advice

[Odie]

Im after some new wheels for my 1.6 mk2.5, any suggestions? Im after wheels for road use that are as light as possible.

[MX-5 Lazza]

Only advice I can offer is that lighter doesn't have to mean better. On my Mk2.5 the ride quality is better with my 17" OZ Superturissmo which are pretty heavy than it is with my 15" Rota Circuit 10s which are light.
On my old Mk1 I replaced the heavy Berkeley 15" wheels with lightweight 15" OZ Superlegerra and the ride became much worse.

[Odie]

17's on a mk2.5? same rolling distance?

[MX-5 Lazza]

14" - 185/60/14
15" - 195/50/15
16" - 205/45/16
17" - 205/40/17

All pretty much the same overall size.

[Odie]

Thanks lazza,

I'd have thought that ride would have had more to do with the profile of the tyre than the weight of the wheel.

TBH I think that any wheels will be significantly lighter than the multi-fits im currently running.

[MX-5 Lazza]

The common advice you will get on most forums is that lighter wheels = better handling and ride. All I can say is that in my experience that isn't always true. The only reason I have a set of lightweight 15" wheels is because I do a fair number of track days and 15" tyres are half the price of 17s.

Also, the 17s look damn good

On 17s...


On 15s...

[ApexJimi]

What is the optimal offset for a MK2?

There seems to be quite a lot of ambiguity surrounding this.

[Odie]

in the second picture are they rota circuits? look alot like the look i want to go for. BUT im after performance over looks primarily. And tyre price is also something i need to look at,

I was thinking of getting 16"'s

also I take it your car is lowered?

[MX-5 Lazza]

Optimal offset is around 38mm. My C10s are 45mm offset but I use some 5mm spacers to bring them back to 40mm. I think the SuperTs are 38mm.

The 2nd picture is 15" Rota Circuit 10. If you want cheap tyres then it has to be 15". 16" seem to be no cheaper than 17".
IIRC the 15" Rota C10 are 5.1Kg.

My car is lowered but not as low now as it was in those pictures. They were with KYB AGX shocks, a batch of FM springs that were lower than expected and FM ARBs. I loved the look and the handling was great but I just couldn't lie with it being that low. I swapped it all with GAZ Gold pro shocks with 400/300 springs and stock ARBs and have set the ride height a fair bit higher. I didn't set it for looks, I set it for optimal handling i.e. the lower wishbones are as horizontal as possible.