Dream To Reality - Designing One Off Custom Wheels
First things first. I'm a big Porsche fan. It would take a lot to persuade me out of a 911 if I was told I could have one car and one car only for the rest of my life. Sadly, with soaring new and used car prices, a 911 has slowly become a car I can only ever dream of owning.
However, with a little effort, dreams can become reality and for Ryan, his dream has always been to build a custom set of wheels from scratch. No, that doesn't mean he ordered a set from a known wheel manufacturer to specific specs. Ryan has literally taken a lump of aluminium and milled these out himself.
Obviously, creating a set of wheels from a sketch on a piece of paper isn't exactly a straight forward process. Once Ryan had a design he liked, the not-so-simple task of figuring out how the design would become a reality began.
Working with Wheel Unique in the UK and using some wheels in similar specification to what he required, rough measurements were taken and Ryan ordered up a set of barrels and Radinox lips that suited the design.
To achieve a clean, uniform finish, Ryan designed the wheels to sandwich together in a face-mount format with hidden hardware fixing the three pieces together from within the barrel.
The faces themselves are a bit of a work of art. Designed on CAD, Ryan sent them to a local milling shop where they were CNC milled from a solid block of aluminium. Ryan has opted against painting them to retain the unique, raw alloy finish and show off the tell-tale markings of CNC tooling.
So with his dream set of wheels taking shape, Ryan needed a subject to show them off on. Luckily, his brother is the proud owner of the Porsche 911 (997) you see here and I'm not sure I could pick a better candidate.
The wheels sit tucked ever-so-slightly up inside the Carreras arches courtesy of Airlift Performance 3P suspension and the stance is only made more aggressive by the addition of a huge spoiler, GT3 front bumper and GT2 rear bumper.
This build is proof that anything can be achieved when some time and effort is invested in making a vision become reality. So perhaps if I am to own a 911 one day, I just need to follow Ryan's lead and set my mind to it, even if it's easier said than done.
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Owner/Creator: Ryan Connolly
Location: Belfast, Northern Ireland