Quote:
Originally Posted by gramicci101
So, question.
Volks are forged. Gram Lights are flow form cast. Advans do both. Mach V Awesomes are flow form cast. Some of the cheaper wheels are low pressure or gravity cast. Some manufacturers have proprietary casting methods.
Obviously gravity cast is the worst, or least good, but among the forged and flow formed wheels is there really a better manufacturing technique that one should lean towards when selecting a wheel for hard usage such as racing?
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Flow formed is an attempt to gain certain properties of a forged product but at a fraction of the manufacturing cost. The key is in the manufacturing process and the cost of tooling. Forging is quite a bit more extensive and the machining process after the pound-ing state is equally as important as the forging process. As you go up the echelon of wheels, each process of manufacturing a wheel is more meticulous with more effort on quality control. In fact, high end flow formed wheels are pretty good, but the result is a much heavier wheel to achieve the same level of strength, rigidity, and engineering modes that you can achieve from a forged product. And yes, failure is always engineered into every wheel.
The lower end of the casting world will allow imperfections to fly and cut out quality control implementation that are in between each process. Something that may require 10 steps for a quality wheel is dropped to 5 steps on a budget setup. As a result, you could be receiving wheels that could have been rejected by a top tier company, but is drop through the cracks in a low end company.
Again...manufacturing is key. Engineering products ain't easy!
With that said, out of all the cast wheels I've driven on, NT03+m is THE ONLY cast wheel that has been downright difficult to bend. But again...anything is possible...LOL!
I can also talk about forging and foundry processes too, but that's just going to rub certain people the wrong way.