What's with coloured lug nuts (rim nuts)

[Presea]

I often see these cars (mostly Civics) with these larger red/blue/white/black lug nuts.

 

They seem to be so protruding, I think they cause wind resistance

 

What's up with that?

[Slowpoke]

have you ever held one of them nuts in your hand? They are forged from aluminium and in some high end ones, titanium. They weigh around 25grams each, compared to normal steel ones which weigh about 65grams. When you use them together with forged lightweight racing rims, they reduce unsprung mass significantly. But they are rather fragile, the threads strip easily and you have to take extra care when using those air wrenches.

[Mondeo]

New nut's lighest weight is 0.01kg and got blue/red (made in Japan)!!!

[Presea]

So you might save 50g per tyre.

 

If each tyre.rim weighs 10kg (avg), which is 10,000g....

50/10,000=5/1000=1/200 (sorry my maths a little slow) = 0.5%

 

How can a 0.5% savings make any difference.

And since weight savings in unsprung weight only helps acceleration.....

 

If I accelerate 0 to 100 in 10s (avg car).

0.5% of that time = 0.5%x10s = 10s/200 = 1/20s = 0.05s = 50ms

0.05s frankly isn't even enough time for a BMW SMG (0.08s/80ms) to change a gear nor the Ferrari F1 Paddle (0.15s/150ms) nor the Aston Martin latest offer on the Vanquish (0.25s/250ms) which by the way is probably the smoothest sequential outside of F1 (and F1 cars take 0.02s/20ms, but that's another story).

A trained human operator can get gearchange down to 0.3-0.4s (300-400ms), and a slight slip up will cause the acceleration far more time than a 50ms savings.

 

 

I personally feel that looking cool....(which is what coloured lug nuts must do for the car).... is simply OVERRATED

 

cheers all .... hope this is a good read.

[Mondeo]

Some hardcore pple (especially on the track guys) are really looking at this , to me and u as find no different.

I personnelly find that whether can secure the rim as main concern, Last month when I was in HK, I saw one track car ran bloody fast and left front wheel ran on the other side (along) after one corner

[Slowpoke]

and they are bloody expensive too.... luckily I got my set free when I bought my rims

[Presea]

My Momos already weigh more than 10kg each, plus tyre, .....damn heavy

 

No point saving 50g

[Madarmour]

A higher percentage of weight can be lost from the driver himself daa.................. My permanent sparetyre itself is worth 20kg!

[Mondeo]

Doc can DIY to remove out ah!?

[Madarmour]

Liposuction costs a lot, not to mention the PAIN afterwards! Tummytuck is not cheap either!

[Presea]

Solution.....when you want to drive fast, leave GF / wife behind

 

Drops 40-50kg or more if....er....the person is heavier

[Madarmour]

Problem is GF has long time become wifey liow and with a couple of kids on tow too. When wifey was still GF, I was still riding my 2 wheeled Honda Raider, so chioing was the last thing on my mind then. Now I don't speed with wifey on board or else I get a lot of unwanted input from the co-driver! So I only drive a bit faster when I'm alone.

[Presea]

Is red the colour of choice ?

 

for light weight lug nuts that is.