wheel banding

You make a fair point, and Wide Wheels do make numerous mentions of their tooling, and have a lot of pictures of the process, which goes some way to reassuring that they're put together properly.

Though it seems for the same price you could just get some wellers, or if you're lucky, Borbet Atiwe or Mattig wheels for around the same price. I don't intend any disrespect to wide-wheels, but I'm pretty damn sure I'd rather have the width from factory…

I hear you, but then how do you think they are made in the factory??
Every steel wheel gets welded.

Wellers are an interesting option. I spent ages on their web site a while back tyring to determine what wheels I would get if given the opportunity - I couldn't find a suitable set. (I was really bored at work that day!!)
Might have increased their range lately, or even do customs.

The big advantage of banding is that you can get the rim in exactly the place you want it relative to the arch without the use of spacers. If you use spacers, they need to be 'hubcentric' which pushes the cost up again, and you probably need longer bolts - more money still.

Just depends how you want to approach it really.

Good luck.

Yeah a good point in regard to the tailoring of the width, but from factory the wheel is only made of two pieces - the rim and the center, which are welded together, rather than what seems to me to effectively be a four piece construction that you get with banded wheels - i.e. outer rim, band, center, inner rim.

The weller website is a pain in the bum though, they have more or less the same image for every diffrent type of wheel, so it's hard to keep track of where you've been! I think I'll just ring them when I'm ready to buy.

If only I could find some Atiwes, they're sooooo nice!

Mat

I was looking for some atiwe`s in the size i wanted and the right price for quite a while, in the end i bought some 7j x 15 mattigs which look pretty good, could of done with the et being a little less for a bit more dish but they are pretty hard to find in 15`s over the 13`s


Also the guy who runs wide wheels is a member on here, and there is also a member on here who had a go at making his own see this post

http://www.vwgolfmk1.org.uk/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=27761&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0