If you're watching this video, then you were probably
like me when I was 16 years old,
you've been looking to try and figure out
what your first set of wheels should be for your car.
Now, you've probably visited Facebook pages,
and different websites, and forums
that are about 10 years old, and you're probably
left with more questions than answers
when you, well, did your research.
A lot of times, people just don't understand
the concept of diameters, widths, offsets, colors
and all that sort of stuff, and when it comes down
to buying your first set of wheels, a lot of that
can be very confusing, even when you go down
to bolt pattern.
Now, this video's not gonna be for a lot of those experts
out there, that are building three-piece wheels,
and things like that.
This is gonna be for your novice people out there
that are looking to buy your first set of wheels.
So, I'm Alex from Fitment Industries,
and we're gonna give you some tips on things that
you should know before you pick up your first set of wheels.
So, the first thing that you're gonna want to take
into consideration when you're getting
aftermarket wheels, is what sort of tires
you're gonna run.
Now, we're not gonna get into the specifics
of what kind of tires you should run,
but the most important thing that you're gonna wanna
remember is that if you're getting aftermarket wheels,
you should probably get after market tires.
We get a lot of emails of people
that are wanting to buy a set of wheels,
but they want to use their OEM tires
that came with, well, their OEM wheels.
So, they end up running a 215-55-17,
and they wonder why their wheels don't look as sporty
on their, you know, after market wheels
when they get them mounted, balanced, and installed.
A lot of times, when you're looking at after market wheels,
you wanna go with some sportier style tires.
Our usual recommendation is to stay right around
a 40 aspect ratio.
Now, if you're not familiar with how tires
and the whole metric system works for them,
you can pretty much assume it like this:
The three numbers represent three different aspects
of the tire.
The first number is the width, or traction path,
in millimeters of the tire, and that's what's really
gonna kinda touch the ground.
The second number is your aspect ratio.
So, that is the distance in sidewall length,
and it's a average ratio of your overall width
for the traction path of the tires.
So, if you have a 225/40, 40 percent of 225
is gonna be your sidewall height.
And then, obviously that last number is your wheel diameter.
So, if you have a 225/50/17, that's gonna be for
a 17 inch diameter wheel.
With sportier tires, and things like that,
A lot of times you're gonna get that look
that you're wanting for your first set of wheels,
not only by just getting after market wheels,
but by getting pretty decent low-pro tires.
Usually, a 40 aspect ratio will get the job done,
and of course, we recommend that if you're looking
to get aftermarket tires, that you try to stick
around something that has a little bit better of a name
than just your basic, entry level, cheapest possible
tires you can buy.
Tires are what connect you to the road,
so if you're going cheap on the tires,
and you spend a lot of money on wheels,
you're kind of missing the entire point
of switching the whole thing out.
Our recommendation is to keep both of those prices in mind,
and making sure that the look that you want
is the look you're gonna get.
If you're looking to see what sort of tires
fit on what size wheels, we have a gallery for that.
You can check it out at fitmentindustries.com/gallery,
and enter in what tire specs and aspect ratio
you're looking to go with, and what other
people are running.
The second thing that you're gonna wanna know
when you're buying wheels and tires for the first time,
is that offset is important, but fitment is (claps hand)
important-er.
The biggest thing that we see a lot of times,
and we get emails from people that are buying
their first set of wheels, is they've seen
StanceNation's Instagram, and they're like, "Wow,
"this guy's running 19 by 10 negative 12 offset wheels,
"and I wanna run that same exact setup, how do I do that?"
And their budget is like 600 dollars, and they have
no concept on doing fender modifications,
and they want it all to fit under the stock body,
and it's not a fun conversation.
When you're buying your first wheels and tires,
our recommendation is to try and just keep things
relatively pretty fundamental.
You're gonna wanna make sure that you understand
the basics of wheels and tires.
Fitment is gonna be a lot more important
by just getting the right size and width and offset down
and not really having to deal with a lot of the, well,
intricacies of going with multi-piece wheels,
or going with over-fenders, or a wide body kit
and then fitting after market wheels on that.
Once you start diving into the more difficult things
about aftermarket wheels and tires,
you have to take a lot of things into consideration,
like stretching your tires, offset spacers,
whether you're doing full muti-piece,
or mono-block forged, what sort of wheels
and companies offer those wheels, and everything in between.
In general, our recommendation is to, well,
use something that has guaranteed fitment.
You're gonna be better off using an 18 by--
Why are you talking so loud?
I heard you from here.
You're so full of (bleep).
I can see the poop coming out of your mouth. (bleep)
Our recommendation is to start with wheels and tires
that have just a good guaranteed recommended fitment,
because at the end of the day, no, you're not gonna
be able to run 19 by 11 0 offset, and you know,
be one of the cool guys on Instagram,
but you will have a clean set-up that works
and functions, and you won't have to worry
about major modifications like metal trimming,
and fender liner clearances, and rolling, and rubbing,
and everything in between, and you'll actually
be able to make it more than 50 miles
without something debeading.
You might be wondering where the sales plug is,
well, if you're looking to see what guarantees
to fit your car, you're talking to the right people.
Fitmentindustries.com, (bell dings)
we have all of that information.
That's the last time I'm gonna say that,
but you should figure out by now,
that we're kinda trying to help you
if you're looking to get your first set of wheels and tires.
(blows raspberry)
The third thing that you're gonna wanna take
into consideration, is brand preference.
Now, if you go out there right now,
there's a ton of brand preference on wheels,
especially when you get into the moderate to experienced
wheel community, there's a lot of people
that follow wheel companies like it's a sport.
And they wanna make sure that everybody knows
about how great these wheel companies are.
When you're buying your first set of wheels,
you're not gonna be super experienced, and understanding
the history of a lot of these wheel companies,
and for that very reason, a lot of times new people
can pick up wheels that may not be the best, strongest,
or, you know, the best applicable option for their car.
The basic thing that you're gonna wanna understand,
is that while you're gonna wanna focus on brand preference,
it really comes down to what you want.
There are a lot of options out there,
whether you're looking at something
that's more aesthetically pleasing
versus something that's lightweight,
or if you're looking for something that's gonna have
a lot of different color options,
versus maybe just your standard black wheel.
The biggest thing that you're gonna wanna
take into consideration with just doing wheels,
is also your tires.
Now, we touched on that before,
and I wanna touch on that again.
But make sure that when you're buying these wheels,
if you're buying them for 1,000 dollars,
that you're also including the fact
that you're gonna have to put some tires on them
bad boys too, and you're gonna wanna make sure
that they're not, you know, no-name tires.
Same thing with your wheels.
Now, if you're looking to try and stay on a budget,
that does not mean that you have to get crummy wheels.
There's a lot of wheel brands out there
that have a ton of different options
for almost every single popular vehicle
that most newbies are looking to buy.
I mean, Subarus, Mitsubishis, Hondas, everything like that.
There's gonna be a lot of wheel companies out there
that supply to that specific market.
If you're looking to keep something
under a thousand dollars, we have a video
that talks about that, but at the same time,
just off the top of our head, Konig are gonna be a great
option, whether you're looking at some flowform option.
Rotiform has some great wheels
that have a bunch of different styling.
You also have Cosmis Racing, which is a great
sport compact wheel.
ESR's rotary-forged line is doing great,
and there's a bunch of other ones, like 3SDM
if you're looking for more of a Euro-styling wheel.
It's gonna get you what you want,
without necessarily breaking the bank.
The same can be said for tires.
The fourth thing that you're gonna wanna remember
or just learn about, is understanding the basics
of what a wheel is, and the specifications
that make it fit on your car.
There's a whole bunch of different things
that are gonna help you figure that out.
Now, if you're looking at just the diameter,
that should be pretty simple, that's the diameter
of your wheel.
If you're looking at what a center line is,
that would be if your wheel was essentially cut
right down the middle.
Your offset is gonna be the distance
between your center line, and your mounting hubsurface
of, well, where your wheel's actually going to mount up.
Now, if you have a positive offset wheel,
what's gonna happen is, is that the mounting surface
is gonna pushed towards the front of the overall wheel.
What that means is the rest of the wheel
is going to push into the fender.
A lot of times you'll see high offset wheels
on things like Corvets, and, well, Lamborghini.
Now, if you're looking for something
that has a low offset, or zero offset,
you're gonna see that the mounting surface
is gonna be pushed farther to the inside of the wheel.
What happens is, is the rest of the wheel,
naturally, is gonna be more concave,
and it's gonna push the rest of the wheel out
towards the fender.
Because of just the current trends right now,
lower offset wheels have gotten extremely popular
and you're gonna see a lot of people wanting to run
wider wheels, with, well, as low of an offset as possible.
But just remember that offset is kind of a funky number.
When you go down closer to zero,
that's gonna push the wheel farther out.
Of course, when you're looking at different offsets,
there are wheels that will sometimes have break clearance
issues with, you know, aftermarket wheels,
or big break kits that are on a lot of different vehicles.
And when you're looking to get something
maybe a little bit more moderate to aggressive,
that's completely fine.
There are fitment ranges for pretty much
every single vehicle, most are around 35 to 50.
So, if you're looking to kinda push it
as close as you can to make a concave wheel
for your first set of wheels, stick to that 35 millimeter
offset, and you should be ready to roll.
But if you start going down further than that,
and risking it for the biscuit, and you wanna try
and get more aggressive, just know that you might
run into problems.
And if you're buying your first set of wheels,
our recommendation is to reference tip number two again,
and just play it safe, and make sure you're going
with something that's guaranteed to fit.
And the fifth, and most important thing
that you're gonna wanna remember when you're buying
your first set of wheels is probably
the simplest one of all: just don't guess.
I get it, I remember being 16, and you wanna go,
and you wanna pick up some wheels,
so you go onto the internet, you do all your research
you try and figure out what fits,
you see somebody that you have no idea who it is,
put down their specs, and they kinda sorta guess
what offset is, even though offset and backspacing
aren't the same thing.
And so you go out there, and you find the wheels,
in that exact spec, so then you get them ordered,
but then you realize that you didn't get tires for them,
so then you start to put the tires from your OEM wheels
onto your aftermarket wheels,
so then you get them mounted, then you gotta get them
balanced, then you figure out, "Oh gosh, I forgot to get
"conical seats, because these new wheels
don't fit my actual, you know, OEM wheels,
they're not the same thing, so then you gotta go get
different wheel lugs, or different wheel bolts,
and then you're figuring it out at Advance Auto Parts
and you can't just decide what's going on,
so you go back to the shop to get everything installed,
and you forgot that you had to get TPMS,
because, well your car's newer than 2008,
so then you forget to get TPMS, so then you have to get TPMS
installed before you get the tires put on,
so then you get the tires put on,
and then you go to put them on your car,
and then you go over to actually look at your car,
and you're super excited, because you spent all this time,
you spent weeks, and weeks, and weeks
getting this all stuff figured out, and they don't fit
because they hit the strut.
That's what happens when you guess.
And that happens to a lot of people.
We see it in a lot of emails, I see it on forums
all the time.
I remember even guessing when I bought
my first set of wheels, and it sucked.
Especially when you got it wrong.
Just don't guess.
There are people out there like us, that this is what we do.
And we wanna make sure that you guys buy
the right set of wheels the first time,
because it doesn't make anybody's life easier
when you have to get stuff returned,
or when you just make the wrong purchase.
Our recommendation is that if you're looking
to pick up a set of wheels, and this is your first time,
just shoot us an email, shoot us a message,
or just talk to us over at wheels and fitmentindustries.com.
Otherwise, just use our website.
You enter your year, make, and model
and it's gonna tell you exactly what fits your car.
Is that a little bit of a sales plug? Absolutely, guys.
I won't even lie about it, but the fact of the matter
is we see so many people that mess up buying
their first set of wheels, that we had to make
a video like this to hope that you guys can understand
that there's a lot more that goes into it
than just picking up a set of wheels.
Especially if you wanna get it right the first time.
So, we hope you guys enjoyed, this is, again,
for our guys that are buying their first set of wheels.
This isn't for the experts out there.
We just wanted to give you guys some tips and tricks
for buying your first set of wheels.
So, we hope you guys enjoyed, don't forget to subscribe
and of course, I'm Alex from Fitment Industries,
and we'll see you later. Peace.