steel wheel manufacturer

[h20hamelan]

Has anyone aver contacted a steel wheel manufacturer to see if they are interested in producing.

My little knowledge is that they will drill any opening required.

Looking for options!

Thanks

[gearbox]

Has anyone aver contacted a steel wheel manufacturer to see if they are interested in producing.

My little knowledge is that they will drill any opening required.

Looking for options!

Thanks

Weller makes a steel wheel for the vintage Formula Fords at 13 x 5.5 and will drill any bolt pattern you want (they may even have them in stock with the correct bolt pattern as many FF uses the Spitfire bolt pattern), but if you are looking for Knock offs you are out of luck unless you invest in a stamping mold. The other option would be a 3 piece that will give you any back spacing and bolt pattern you want, like the Compomotives, but again not KO. With that being said, I did have a set Compo's that had an aluminum center that can be milled for peg drive and center nut. But not really street legal and you will have to do the milling. Not sure if the weller looks all that good on an Elan, but is a very well made wheel great for vintage racing.

[h20hamelan]

Looks like a fun car.
Thanks
It seems many people like the authentic look and feel of a newer steel wheel.

Looked like "Kiyoshi" had Panasports designed, and if their original design is still available would it not be possible to forward to a steel wheel manufacturer.

Could a poll of elan owners persuade a steel wheel manufacturer to produce some?

Regards

James

[Keith Scarfe]

I tried recently (may 2012). You might remember (do a search on here if not) that there was a batch made a few years ago. Original design but slightly thicker gauge thus stronger and was distributed to all the traders, Miller, Mattey etc. These have all gone now so I did a bit of research and found that these were actually made by Weller wheels in the 90's. So I contacted them. See below:

Dear Sir.
I believe a while ago (like 10 years) you did a run of pressed steel wheels for the Lotus Elan (the 1960's one). I notice on your home page in the 'News' you say "in the pipeline - Morris Minor 5J x 14, 5 1/2J x 13 Lotus Cortina replacements, 8 spokes and a few more ". Is there any chance you will be repeating this run for the Lotus Elan? Are these similar to the Lotus Cortina I don?t know. I need a set of 4 for my car and would love to keep to the original design which are obviously NLA. I would be grateful it you would reply with any information. Was it indeed your company who did this batch?
Regards.
Keith.

Hello Keith
Yes it was Weller, but before the German buyout. They destroyed all the Weller tooling at the end of the 90's.
The Elan wheel was made for a dealer, and we have discussed doing it again, (I have the drawings) however the perennial problem is tooling cost.
If you watch the facebook page or the website, we will announce developments as they occur.
Best Regards
Graham Hill
Weller wheels
49D Pipers Road Redditch B98 0HU
01527 506047
07805 377710 Fax 01527 510378
http://www.wellerwheels.com



If you take a look at their web site: http://www.wellerwheels.com/ you can see they are actively doing batch runs of legacy stuff. If a few of us demand they re do a batch of our elan wheels you never know they might do it. I for one would defo buy a set.

How many on here would be interested. I could always fire off another email to them saying 'look we have this many people interested Please make another batch'. Must be as many Elans as Lotus Cortinas about don't you think?

[gherlt]

Hello,
this is very interesting, but maybe it might be faster to ask them how much would be the minimum number required to start manufacturing. If they say "100 at this price", we could look if we could gather enough people to buy the lot. And you could ask also how price lowers if we pass the minimum quantity .
Regards

Guillermo

[higgyuk]

Has anyone aver contacted a steel wheel manufacturer to see if they are interested in producing.

My little knowledge is that they will drill any opening required.

Looking for options!

Thanks

[email protected] they say new wheels $200 each higgyuk

[Fred Talmadge]

Here was a American supplier http://www.leechapmanracing.com/wheel.htm and they still have one left. If they can come in near this price I'd for sure get a set. I wanted the Elva wheels but at that price I balked.

[gearbox]

[/quote] they say new wheels $200 each higgyuk[/quote]

Now at $200 a pop, you get into Minilite territory, and thats for the real Minilites. As I recall, the Weller FF wheels went for $80 retail a pop a while ago which I would think would be about the same for the Elan Wheels. But I understand the costs for the tooling. The rims can be spun, but the center section has to be pressed. I think I can have the tooling made for about $10,000, but at 100 wheels, that would be $100/wheel to amortize not including the wheel. I would think you have to get a group buy, or a distributor willing upfront the costs for 1,000 rims, or 250 sets of 4. This way you would only have $10 a wheel to amortize so you can sell it for about $100 retail. You can also easily switch up the rim widths and back spacing to anything you want. But I'm not sure if there is a market for these rims at that number. But I'm willing to pursue this if anyone is interested.

[rgh0]

Lotus Marques ( also know as the Elan Factory) in Melbourne had tooling made to reproduce the original steel wheels. Dont know if he has them in stock currently and if not how many orders he would want to do a production run but worth a call

cheers
Rohan

[h20hamelan]

I for one, would love to have Two sets of steels.

So I can try different tyres.

At around 100 per, to me it is worth Two sets.


Thanks for all your hard work, contacting, thinking, replying etc


regards

[h20hamelan]

Hello
Is there anyone else liking me to contact the Elan Factory in Melbourne
I would like to know how much interest there is.

regards

[Keith Scarfe]

Hello
Is there anyone else liking me to contact the Elan Factory in Melbourne
I would like to know how much interest there is.

regards

I am still after a set of 4 if you can find any at reasonable cost. I would have thought importing them from Australia would be prohibitively expensive though.

[rodlittle]

I also need a set, but again shipping from Aus to uk is likely to be too expensive
rod

[types26/36]

Rod,
I would think you would need bolt on wheels and I think the most people would want the knock on type, this I think would also add to the cost to produce the two types.
I think I could do with a couple of both type but like you think it would be too costly.

[h20hamelan]

well, so there is a factory in aus. there were some comments about uk or usa production too I thought ???