The Secret of Rotating Weight vs Static Weight
Rotating Weight vs Static Weight
When I was a kid, playgrounds were awesome. The slides were bumpy enough to break your tailbones, the swings were rusted and needed 3 cans to WD-40 to stop squeaking, but most importantly, those Merry-Go-Round used to be the standard until the helicopter parents gen find them way too dangerous for their precious iPad bubbled kids.
Merry-Go-Rounds were my favorite. The faster you had your friend spin you on the Merry-Go-Round, the more ill you will feel, and you usually don’t stop until you've reached the edge of needing to vomit. The G force was exhilarating and the faster you went, the heavier you feel. Now that my friends, is called rotational force. So why the hell am I talking about Merry-Go-Round on our Signature blog?
Simple, guess what goes around very fast on your car that is round? Wheels. Reducing the weight of your wheels, do a lot for your car’s performance.
This is a 718 GT4. Stock Porsche wheels are extremely light and forged, OEM Porsche GT4 wheels 20x8.5 ET61 front weighs 22.7LB and 20x11 ET50 rear weighs 22.6LB.
Signature SV104 GT4 fitment 20x8.5 ET55 front weighs 20.8LB and 20x11 ET50 rear weighs 21.7LB. Total rotational weight savings is 11.6LBs.
Big deal, right? 11.6LB, you’ve probably seen Chipotle burritos weighing more than that. This is where I bring the Merry-Go-Rounds back, remember the faster you were on the Merry-Go-Round, the heavier you felt? Well, that goes for wheels, every pound you shave off your rotating weight is equivalent of 8.4 pounds removed from static weight. So shaving 11.6LB off your wheels setup is equivalent of removing 97.44LB off the chassis of your vehicle.
For a car’s performance, every ounce counts. For my track vehicle, I had to drain 1 gallon of washer fluid (8.3LB), spent $800 on a lithium battery (37LB), and spent a fortune on lighter suspension components and brakes (22LB). I would need to sell a kidney to drop another 97.44LB at this point as there’s more weight to be shed. The issue with shedding weight with lighter exhaust or lighter batteries is the balance of the vehicle is compromised. Example, my battery and exhaust are all the way in the back, so shaving too much weight with those mods have made my car front heavy. But with wheels, the weight drop is usually equally distributed, it’s one of the few weight reductions that doesn’t have drawbacks. Your car will handle, brake, and accelerate better with less rotation mass.
At Signature, we are very conscious of weight savings. More importantly to us is the longevity of our products. We have reached the pinnacle of what is possible for 6061-T6 material, from 10,000 TON press forging blanks, to baking aluminum at our proprietary temperature in order to align the aluminum grains at their atomic level, to track testing every single design that we offer. We study each brake setup down to 1/10th mm, this allows us to bend the spokes around the brakes to create maximum concavity which also reduces weight as it requires a thinner wheel hub. We also drill pockets holes behind the mounting hubs behind the lugs to reduce weight without sacrificing durability. We analyze and stress test each design, adding material where needed and removing where it doesn’t add value. We could easily cut our wheels to be even lighter for bragging rights, but how many laps, endurance races, and NYC potholes will they hold up? Our wheels are designed to take anything you can throw at it and outlast the life of your vehicle. That’s the Signature Merry-Go-Round way!
Jimmy
Photo credit IG @yasmpower
