Rays Gram Lights like the 57Transcend we wrapped in Toyo R888R’s and bolted up to the the Mullet Mustang, and the Enkei GTC01RR we ran on the Mustang as dual purpose street/track wheels are both very high-quality flow formed wheels that have handled a ton of track abuse without so much as a scratch. Of course the extra manufacturing time and effort associated with flow forming means these wheels do tend to come at a higher price point than a cast wheel.

Flow forming also increases elongation, or the amount that a wheel is able to flex before arriving at a breaking point, an important safety feature if you’re smashing curbs at the race track or pounding pot holes on the highway.Įnkei’s GTC01RR also look fantastic on our S197 Mustang and are among the strongest and stiffest MAT flow formed wheel the company makes.

Check out the video below to get a good sense of what that process looks like (sometimes heat is applied directly to the barrel area during this process, in other cases the precast wheel is heated in an oven before being flow formed).Īs you can see, the flow forming process stretches and compresses the aluminum in the barrel area of the wheel, and in the process the structure of the alloy is realigned in a way that enhances its tensile strength and stiffness, giving it similar properties to a forged wheel in the barrel area. The flow forming process, sometimes called flow forging, rotary forging, spun rim, or rim rolling, begins with a cast wheel that is loaded into a specialized machine that spins the wheel while pressing steel rollers against the rim area to pull the rim to its final width and shape. True wheel aficionados, and especially those with a performance orientation, will also know there’s also a hybrid wheel manufacturing method that produces a wheel that falls somewhere in between cast and forged called flow formed wheels. The video above gives you a quick idea of how low pressure casting works.Įnkei’s MAT process uses flow forming technology. Low pressure cast wheels do have slightly better properties than a gravity cast wheel, but in a modern manufacturing plant these two types of cast wheels don’t differ much in terms of tensile strength or grain structure. And if you’re a serious wheel nerd, you’ll also know that cast wheels can be further subdivided into gravity cast and low pressure cast, where molten aluminum is either poured into a mold (gravity cast) or injected into the bottom of a pressurized mold so it fills the space from the bottom up (reducing the likelihood of air bubbles and thus porosity in the alloy). If you ask the average car enthusiasts, chances are he (or she!) will tell you there’s two basic types of alloy wheels: cast and forged. To better understand these types of wheel failures, lets take a look at how wheels are constructed so that the importance of wheel strength and load rating comes into clearer focus before you go shopping for your next set of street or track rims. We’ve always run the strongest and highest quality wheels we could afford on our cars to avoid this kind of thing, so although we haven’t experienced a wheel failure ourselves, we’ve certainly witnessed our fair share at the track. Best case scenario the fender gets taken out when the wheel fails, worst case scenario (that we’ve seen) is the car gets severely modified as it slams into a wall on 3 wheels. We’ve all seen pictures of wheels that have exploded out on track, and many of us have been at the track to witness these types of failures in person.

Furthest witness cast