nobbyv

A few people asked for this, so here it is:

I purchased these wheels from OEM Wheels Plus to serve as winter wheels for the Bridgestone Blizzaks LM-60s I just purchased. They are replicas of the 19" RS7 wheels. They are 19x8.5", are hub-centric (no hub rings required)and have an offset of +35. They cost $719/shipped for all four. They are available in three different finishes; these are the basic silver machined face.

http://www.oemwheelsplus.com/index.p...heels-set.html

Got the wheels today. For some reason, OEM Wheels Plus required a signature from someone present for the FedEx delivery, and would not waive this requirement. I'm swamped at work, so ended up having to have them dropped at the Kinkos 15 miles away from home and go and pick them up. They shipped two boxed wheels in a larger box (likely to save on shipping), which will NOT clear the S6 trunk or door frame. Long story short, if you're thinking of going this way, arrange to have someone home, have a truck to pick them up, or be prepared to spend 20 minutes in the Kinkos parking lot opening up the outer boxes(which are bound with plastic strapping) and arranging them to fit your car. Big pain.

The quality of the packaging (as you may have inferred) is robust: an outer large box, a smaller box for each wheel, plastic bag, front lip-protecting plastic band, and front wheel face "condom".


The finish on the wheels was a 8.5/10. I inspected two very carefully, and noticed an average of one imperfection per wheel. In the pic below, you can see a small "dent"; I would have thought this was from a mis-casting of some kind but the other wheel showed no signs of this defect. Overall, for the money I was impressed with the finish quality.


The wheels seemed light, but I didn't have a bare 19" OEM wheel to compare them to. I have read that the OEM Wheels Plus replicas tend to run about 10% lighter than OEM. Whether this compromises strength, I can't say.


Center caps are included; these are "generic" OEM VW center caps with no logo as seen.


Also included are Audi logo metallicized plastic covers which adhere to the center caps with double sided tape. Pic of attached cover:


I am not sure about the durability of the double-sided tape over the course of the winter. I had planned on ordering OEM center caps, but may try these for the winter and see how they do. Based on the fact that the included center caps appeared to be OEM VW parts, I believe these are "standard" sized center cap holes (56mm), so OEM Audi caps SHOULD fit.


Here is a shot of the wheel mounted to the car.


The dimension of concern was whether they would clear the calipers. Here are two shots of the top and bottom of the caliper on the 19" wheels, along with the same shots with the OEM 20".








As you can see, as expected the 19" wheels have less clearance overall than the 20". However, I estimate there is a good 3/8" between the wheel and the caliper. Even accounting for the 1/8" height of the wheel-balancing weights (once they are applied), the calipers will clear no problem.

Clearly, I did not have tires mounted on the wheels when mounting them. If you're concerned with tire rub on the inner fenders: these are the OEM 19" wheel width and offset, I can say with confidence there will be no tire rubbing.

OEM Wheels Plus offers several other styles in the 19" size. I can't attest to the fitment on those, though strongly suspect that anything that is 19x8.5" and has an offset of ET35 will fit.

Overall, I'm happy with this purchase. I usually mount my winter setup in mid-Novemeber; I'll post up if there are any surprises then or throughout the winter.

///M Traitor

Thanks for posting! I'm curious how straight and true these wheels are. Please post back once you have the tires mounted and balanced!

Deazy

This is great. Thanks for taking the time to do this and report back. I'll be ordering a set.

mirin S6

Thanks for being the guinea pig. I think I'm going to order a set too. I really like Hartmann's matte rotors, but you can't beat the price on these.

dD/dt

Thanks for putting this up. For the price, you can't do any better than this.

nobbyv

Got my tires mounted and balanced on these wheels this past weekend (hopefully won't need them for awhile, but they were taking up too much space in the garage separately and wouldn't fit in my wheel rack).

Took them to my local guy that I trust (uses a Hunter Road Force machine); when I came to pick them up, he asked "Who did you get these from?". I was expecting the worst when he asked that, but when I told them where I got them and how much I paid he was impressed. He said they were VERY true; the "worst" wheel required 2.5(?...I admit I don't know the terminology here...is that 2.5 grams? 2.5 weights? either way, he was impressed). He also mentioned the high quality of the finish.

So, the wheels proved to be very straight and true. Hopefully they stay that way.

snagitseven

He probably meant 2.5 pounds of road force match balancing which would be excellent. If he meant 2.5 ounces in wheel weights, that wouldn't have had him very impressed.
Recommendation: Avoid all pot holes.

///M Traitor

Awesome man, thanks for the info!

skenn1977

Nobbyv. How are the wheels working out? Any pics with the wheels and tires mounted?

diverdan

I've had them on my car for about 2 weeks now, with no issues.
They look good and didn't have any manufacturing defects that I could see.
I also got a set of black 17mm bolts covers, strictly for cosmetic purposes ($20 or so online).

I installed Bridgestone Blizzak LM-32 tires on them.