Friday 14 February 2014

Meiju..


SSR Meiju (Meiju Radius?)
9/1985

Yet Another random 80's Speed Star wheel, and a fairly rare one at that. I have only seen a couple sets of this rim ever pop up for sale (in 14 and 15"), while any other pics or info seems to be non-existent. A rare wheel.. but even then still manages to be common compared to some others..!
Anyway, its a 3-piece wheel (outer and inner barrel halves are welded on assembly), cast centre, and overall a design that seems to be heavily BBS RS inspired..

Parts to complete the wheel, still with their original boxes...

..as usual, there are two full sets of wheel nuts..

These wheels included the Electron lock system, with 1985 being quite early days for this (EX-C being released the year before AFAIK).
The lightly polished cap body is unusual compared to the normal gold/chrome/blackcrhome plated versions on other models..

The bare wheel..

Interestingly, and unlike other SSR wheels with the screw on threaded collar (excluding the EX-C aero covers); the threaded collar screws through the centre cap plate - meaning it would need to be removed to take the wheel off the car.

'Short' cap screwed on.

Assembled wheel.
White, red, black, and gold is a fairly ridiculous colour combination...!

..But no doubt it would have looked sharp in its day. I love the large gold fasteners here...

Another interesting detail is the wheels construction - with the front and rear barrel halves sandwiching the centre, as is done on earlier SpeedStar wheels.

...The two halves (barrel and lip) are then welded; meaning this weld would need to be cut to remove the face.
Strangely, the level of finish on this barrel (the whole set) also happens to be noticeably higher than usual.. inside and out. Odd. Would be a shame to put tyres on them!

So for the time being, I'll just clean and stare at these. Maybe one day I'll get some tyres onto them; but they're only unused once, and hiding away in a box has meant the last 28 years hasn't left a mark...!



2 comments:

  1. do you sell them?
    or other things like wheelfans?

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    Replies
    1. No, just collect/hoard the damn things..!
      Can't help you with the wheel fans either unfortunately.


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