SEPTEMBER 2017 81LIP MATERIALS
On single-piece wheels with a lip the lip will obviously be
made from aluminium but on multi-piece wheels you have the
freedom of being able to choose from a variety of materials
for your lips, with varying degrees of durability. Aluminium
lips are the most common and they need quite a bit of care; if
polished or brushed and then lacquered, they will last longer
but sometimes water can get under the lacquer if it chips and
can stain the metal underneath, leaving you with white milky
stains appearing beneath the lacquer’s surface, and they’ll
need refurbing. If they are polished and left unlacquered you
don’t have to worry about that, but you do have to worry
about water stains, scratches from vigorous washing, spotting
from brake dust and other contaminants and so on. They are
fairly easy to polish, either by hand or using a drill attachment,
but regular care and maintenance is required. A good wheel
wax will help, but some sealants will leave a milky finish, not
what you want when you’re going for ultimate show shine,
and some waxes and sealants will struggle to adhere to
bare aluminium. One product that has been recommended,
though we’ve not yet tried it, is Gyeon Q2 Rim, one of the few
sealants that does properly adhere to bare aluminium and
offers lasting protection. A lot less common, but slightly easier
to look after, are brushed lips; if these are left unlacquered,
they will be susceptible to the same sort of corrosion and
staining as polished lips but they will be easier to look after as
you can carefully brush them yourself to remove any marks.
The other lip material you are likely to encounter is
stainless steel and Radinox. While heavier than aluminium,
stainless lips are much tougher, being both stronger and more
resilient to marks and staining. Radinox is technically a type
of stainless steel alloy but it’s tougher than regular stainless
steel; depending on where you look and what you read, some
people claim Radinox dishes cannot be kerbed but while
they are extremely tough they are not indestructible. They
are much easier to look after and clean than aluminium lips
and many people happily run wheels with Radinox dishes all
through winter and they come out looking as good as new.DIAMOND CUT WHEELS
Diamond cutting is a finishing technique that results in a surface with very
fine lines and a slight rainbow effect, often likened to a CD (if anyone still buys
those...). Essentially a special machine is used to remove a very fine layer of the
wheels’ surface material, leaving behind the diamond finish. Usually a lacquer is
applied over the top of the surface, which can chip and allow water ingress, as
we explained earlier. Diamond cut wheels can only be refurbed a certain number
of times as each time a small amount of material is removed from the wheel’s
surface, and it will reach a point where it’s no longer safe to remove any more
material as it might compromise the wheel’s integrity.CALCULATING OFFSET MANUALLY
This is handy should you ever find yourself buying a set of used wheels and the
seller doesn’t know the offset and it isn’t stamped anywhere on the wheel, which
does happen. What you will need is something like a piece of wood, which is
long enough to rest across the entire diameter of the wheel, and a tape measure.
Pay attention, here’s the science part. First things first, measure the width of the
wheel from lip to lip with your tape measure (in mm) and then divide the number
by two - this is the location of the wheel’s centreline. Now lay the wheel face
down with your piece of wood on the back of the barrel and measure from the
wheel’s mounting surface to the the bottom of your wood ruler. Now you simply
subtract the first number from the second and you have your offset. So, for
example, let’s say you measured your wheel as being 300mm wide, giving you a
centreline of 150, and measuring from the mounting surface gives you 170mm;
subtract 150 from 170 to leave you with 20, and that’s your offset. Easy.PBMW217.tech_guide.ed3.indd 81 07/08/2017 08:45