Finally, after almost a year of waiting, the time and money invested in these very special wheels has paid off, and my god, they are THE BEST wheels I've ever owned (even compared to previous sets of Volk wheels I've had on other cars). I've eventually fitted every car I've owned with wheels from the geniuses in Japan who come up with these things.
if you're familiar with the ZE40 Time Attack or any of Volk's Time Attack wheels, you'll probably be wondering why these aren't black with red stripes...
well, they arrived that way, which was quite upsetting because I was promised by Mackin that they can definitely get Ray's to make me these wheels with a blue accent stripe instead of the normal red, it would just increase the lead Time by a month or so. I've dealt with getting their wheels over here before so I know what a pain it can be sometimes.
Well, I got a call in November after about a year of waiting, from the Vendor who told me "good news, your wheels will be here by the end of January. Bad news, they're the exact size ordered but they DIDN'T COME with the blue stripes I was promised, which was supposed to be the whole reason they took so long. So while I was excited they were finally coming, I was also pissed as can be about the stripe debacle.
So I spent the months leading up to delivery (which by the way, ended up being sometime in February rather than January as told) trying to find a shop that would custom paint them for me, but literally every respected wheel repair/paint/custom shop in the freaking SF Bay Area either didn't respond or straight up told me, "oh no we can't do that".
So despite having the strongest forged wheels that will be able to be made for at least the next decade finally on their way, I felt like I was screwed. I mean hell, my car is Laser Blue. There was no way the red would match.
Thankfully, the Mini community's own Lyle Beckwith from Vinyl Styles was more than happy to step up to the plate. The man is an absolute artist with vinyl. He had a shade of blue that matched my car 99.9% perfectly, and some incredibly steady hands because the rim stripe is cut into sections on each wheel that have been laser engraved out of the metal, and each section of the stripe ends in a rounded edge, which he had to hand cut.
Theyve been on the car for about 2 months now and my god, they're the best looking, best performing wheels I've ever had.
if you don't know about the ZE40 TA edition, it's an incredibly limited run of ZE40's with slightly more strength and slightly less weight. The ZE40 is literally the strongest wheel that will be able to be forged for at least the next decade. With that in mind, I thought, "okay, well that probably means they'll be a little heavier than your average Volk". How wrong I was. They weigh just 13.7 lbs in 17x8 sizing with a 42 offset. They look like they were molded around my StopTechs almost.
I love that from afar they look like normal racing wheels, but when you get closer, you realize there's more than meets the eye. It's a 10 spoke design with 4 totally different spoke shapes, which is all for rigidity's sake.
Theyre absolutely works of art, and there's no faking the kind of details that go into these wheels.
and then there's the "Bead Seat Knurling" tech derived from Ray's F1, GT3, etc. wheels. At first I thought it was a gimmick. It claims to keep the tires from spinning or wiggling at all on the rim and it absolutely lives up to that claim. You don't notice how much your tires move around on your rim until you have rims that prevent that from happening at all. It makes a huge difference in acceleration and road feedback, even with my car's 300+whp (bigger turbo, RPM Power stg3, etc.).
Seriously, if you're thinking of getting some serious wheels, you can't get better than these. There's probably already a million copies. Even HRE copied the ZE40, albeit a far inferior design and they don't even do much in house besides cutting faces on their wheels, bolting them to barrels and then charging super rich guys wayyyyy too much for them.
Volk is easily the most highly evolved wheel company when it comes to forging. They have machines that nobody else does! Mold Forging at 10,000+ lbs of pressure, physically changing the molecular structure of the metal to make it much much more dense.
They are the only company overseeing their wheels from start to finish IN HOUSE.
Needless to say, all the annoyance of waiting so long only to find out I was being buttered up by a vendor who just wanted the sales commission,yeah that was annoying, but there's no getting past how great these wheels are. They put the power to the ground better than any wheel I've ever had.
Now all I've gotta do is get them ceramic coated so I can stop worrying about a rock damaging that gorgeous Hyper black finish.
if you're on the modded Minis facebook page, you're probably tired of seeing them, but as far as I've been told, I'm the only one in the country with these on a Mini. Figured I should share these with my NAM peeps as well!
Im pretty sure the production on the Time Attack version is already completely done, but they've got some awesome finishes on the standard ZE40's as well, and if you get lucky you might find an extra set of TA's on RavSpec or something in r56 sizes. Everyone should get to experience the massive difference wheels like these make.
Anyways, enough from me. Here's some pictures! Just after Vinyl master Lyle finished them up! Oh and in case you're wondering, yes, I do still have the Time Attack red high speed valve stems. Had to spend way too much on 4 of their blue valve stems, but it was necessary lol.
Gotta have a booty shot. Don't mess with this Mini. That's my booty.
I love this picture, but I just realized I left the bonnet popped a little. Ignore that part, stare at the damn wheels!


Freaking Toyota, ruined an otherwise awesome picture. And parked right next to me of course, in a nearly empty freaking lot.