Talk Morgan Forums Morgan Sports Cars Morgan Aero 8, 2012< Plus 8, SuperSports, Coupe & Aeromax Anyone looking for Aero S1 spare wheels?

Interesting, magnesium is a lot lighter so I do wonder how they can do that - unless it will be using less material?
I profess to not knowing much about alloy wheel creation!

Thanks - was a good test of the wipers and aircon doing 200 miles in that weather.
It's 360 wheels, they also do 3SDM and Dare and Apex wheels i think. They had a variety of F1 and BTCC wheels as well, either being refurbished or being remade in aluminium instead of magnesium.

This is one of the things which was discussed.

Our wheels are cast magnesium, and would have been cast in such a way as to make the manufacture vaguely cost effective. They would have also had to make the wheels stronger as a roadwheel, and also added more material in certain places as apparently magnesium wheels lose strength over time. It's highly unlikely that OZ Racing still have the casting from our wheels, so for them to make another production run would require a new casting (€25,000 or more).
Hence OZ Racing needing a decent production run to make the numbers viable.

Making an aluminium wheel from billet (forged) rather than cast makes them 25-30% stronger OR lighter than an equivalent cast aluminium wheel. Given that the specific density of aluminium is 35% higher than magnesium you quickly get to the point where a CAST magnesium wheel can end up and barely any lighter than a FORGED aluminium wheel... although making forged wheels is expensive because the CNC machines are hideously expensive and the waste material from machining the billet is enormous.

Now the other thing is that once you have created a replica wheel in CAD and told the CAD you're using aluminium it can calculate the volume of material and therefore the weight of the finished product - before you actually start cutting a wheel.
And of course the CAD program can calculate stresses and strengths.

Given that a fully loaded Aero is topping out at 1400kg (with two people, fuel, and luggage) the wheels don't need to be as strong as a 9x18 wheel used on a 2.5 ton SUV for example.

I am excited that we might all soon have a sensible long term solution - wheels that are similar in design and weight to the originals but are less brittle and also able to be repaired by ANY alloy wheel specialist.

I hope to have more information in the next month or so. Watch this space.

Thanks for the update. Really interesting.

Interesting stuff, I did wonder if they might be forged.
Makes you wonder why the originals were magnesium, in my experience they are no different to the race wheels i.e. no added material - which might be why they crack rather easily..they do sound cool though!

I would imagine they could make identical copies with your old wheel as a datum point.

This is the issue - with the magnesium wheels in racing at the end of the season they bin them. If they damage them they bin them.
And racetracks don't tend to have potholes and cats eyes and speed bumps.

Magnesium wheels are just not a good idea for a road car.
If you're ordering a new Porsche GT4RS for example you can spec magnesium wheels for an extra £11,000 (that's not a typo!).
And if you kerb one, or damage one on a pothole? Buy another one.

Yup, we're planning to start with a "copy" of the original wheel and then see what the CAD says about weight and strength and go from there.

Maybe I don't know enough about wheels, but (apart from needing a lot of polishing) I had no isues with Slotmags on my TVR
https://jalopnik.com/vintage-slot-mag-wheels-are-ubiquitous-for-a-reason-1821676879

There's some interesting reading on Mag wheels if you Google the topic.

They aren't magnesium.
The original racing slot mags were a magnesium and aluminium alloy, but this wasn't robust enough for a road wheel so various manufacturers who made this design of wheel (known as a slot mag) made them from aluminium.
Yours on the TVR are aluminium, hence needing lots of polishing.

Indeed - i've spent way too many hours in the last few months on this research :-(