Wheels

Having seen a few posts on the forum around American Racing Wheels from the US, I decided these were the business so contacted Bob Lacey at Vintage Wheels.
Bob offers a number of styles however I stuck with the more traditional 427 model that has a step in the rim. There are some smooth rims (407) model, that are slightly dearer and the extra cost helped make up my mind!
Bob proved to be a great guy to deal with and has supplied a number of AK customers previously. This is handy as it means that Bob knows all the sizes and offsets needed.
All I needed to do was decide on the wheel style and the diameter. I went for 17" rims to avoid the rubber band look of the 18"wheels and to give a little more comfort on poor UK roads.
having placed the order and paid up front, it took about a month for the wheels to arrive and I think they look amazing.

The spinners are really nice - there is a threaded boss that inserts from the back of the wheel which presents a thread at the front that the spinner screws on to. There's a grub screw that prevents the spinner coming loose.

 The wheels come complete with chromed nuts and I paid extra for the 'lug covers' as our US friends call them. These are really well designed and make the wheels look like proper knock-off types.

The wheel sizes supplied by Bob were 8 x 17" front and 9.5 x 17" rears.

Tyres took a bit of research.
The AK manual suggests 215/50 17" front and 255/45 17" rears, however when visiting the AK open day, I noticed that they were fitting 225/50 fronts - which Jon confirmed.

Quite tricky finding a matched set of tyres at the differing sizes (and of a make I had heard of!) but I eventually found continental Sport Contact 5's for around £530 fitted. A quick word with the fitter made sure that due care was paid to not damaging my expensive wheels - so a shout out for F1 AutoCentre in Kidderminster for doing a great job.

All in, including import duty, VAT, tyres came to around £2600 which is about £100 less than AK can supply Image Wheels. Unfortunately, Brexit probably added £200 to my bill!.

Anyhow - here's the final effect: