Blog

Short blog posts, journal entries, and random thoughts. Topics include a mix of personal and the world at large.

Don't need my business

Before I chose to get a different set of wheels for my 2026 Mazda MX-5, the plan was to powder-coat the stock black 17-inch wheels in silver. The frugal person in me who grew up in poverty can’t in good conscience swap out a brand new set of wheels and tires just because I wanted a different look. The compromise in the middle is to change the color. Black colored wheels on cars is so not the business.

To the Yelp pages!

I’m the type of person who prefer to communicate using email. There’s a freedom of time, and it allows me to tailor my words to be as precise as possible. Specifically to cars, it’s easier to spell everything out in writing. For example, the power-coat color I want is a particular Porsche silver. In an email I can include a link to the manufacturer of the exact color, no ambiguities.

But it seems automotive shops prefer communicating over phone. At least when it comes to wheel repair. I emailed a few local wheel refinishing shops for quotes. One blew me off completely. Another took two days to respond. The one that did timely respond did not follow up, even when I wrote back inquiring how should we proceed to the next step.

I’ve done some sales back in the day, so it’s wild to me that these shops can ignore an entire channel of lead generation. In the year of our lord 2026, email communication is table stakes! The only logical explanation is that business is so good for these wheel repair companies that they absolutely don’t need email leads.

In my stubborn refusal to pick up the phone (changing the wheel color is more of a want, not a need), I pivoted to swapping out the wheels instead. No ragrets.

Where has the air gone?

A week ago I put on new wheels and tires on my 2026 Mazda MX-5. Fast forward to two days ago I noticed two of the wheels were already low on air. Baffling, because I’ve only done about 10 miles on the set since installation. Unless I’m incredibly unlucky in catching a two nails on two seperate tires in the least amount of miles, the leakage has got to be from the equipment.

Well, the tires are new, and so are the wheels. It’s very unlikely those are malfunctioning from the factory. The only culprit that I immediately zeroed in on is the tire valves. Those were also purchased brand new, but their efficacy in sealing to the wheels is dependent on the installer. If you don’t pull the rubber bit far out enough, the base won’t adhere to the wheel surface completely.

So out came the soapy water spray and the hypothesis was confirmed. Many bubbles coming out of the valve stem base. I used a four-way valve stem tool to gain leverage on the valve and pulled on it outwardly. To my surprise, it actually worked! Both leaky wheels have successful held air for two consecutive days of checking. Knock on wood.

Sidebar: car enthusiasts should not look down upon brick and mortar auto parts stores like AutoZone and O’Reilly. Those stores might not sell the appropriately OE quality stuff for your finest German and Japanese machines, but if you need something in a pinch - like the aforementioned four-way valve stem tool - auto parts stores are a figurative god send. Especially on weekends where without that part, you are otherwise stuck on that project.

The blame for the tire valve seating issue has got to be on the technician that mounted the tires to the wheels, right? They do so many sets per day that it’s got to be muscle memory. This particular time, muscle memory failed to apply enough force. Part of the mounting process should really involve checking to see that the rubber valve has seated correctly.

Shame! America’s Tire has always been reliable and cheap for me. I guess you really do get what you paid for. I’ll choose a different tire place next time where you can pay more for attention to detail.

Seems impossible

I did not realize it was possible to balance a wheel and tire package and not have to add additional weights.

The non car enthusiast of you may not know this, but when you go get a new set of tires, the technicians have to put the wheel and tire setup on a balancing machine. Because tires are not perfectly round rotationally out of the factory. (And your wheels, after many miles of battering, aren’t likely to be perfectly round either.) Guided by the machine, the mechanic attaches tiny grams of weights onto the inner wheel rim to make the whole thing roll smoothy.

I recently got a new set of wheels for my MX-5. Two of them were brand new, two of them were used from eBay. I bought tires from Tire Rack, then shipped directly to the local America’s Tire for mounting. (Both have been and remain excellent companies to deal with when it comes to tire needs.) Upon receiving the wheels with tires mounted, I noticed one of them did not have any wheel weights glued to it.

I flagged an America’s Tire staff person to inquire about the perceived discrepancy. Perhaps - this was a busy store on a Saturday - they forgot to balance one of the wheels. After checking with the technician who performed the job, the staff responded that particular wheel balanced with the tire without weights. Alright, I will take your word for it. Sorry for besmirching the quality of technicians. I wasn’t really familiar with your game.

If this were one of the brand new wheels, it wouldn’t have been that alarming. You’d expect a new wheel plus new tire have a higher chance of making perfect balance. But this was one of the eBay wheels off a 30,000+ miles wrecked car! It was initially kind of difficult to believe that wheel balanced out without any addendum.

Indeed that is the case. After mounting the wheels onto the MX-5 and taking it out for a spin, there were no abnormal vibrations. I mean, you’d know if a wheel is off balance, especially at highway speeds.

Death to black wheels

What do you do after you’ve just spent $38,000 out-the-door for a new sports car? Immediately drop more money on it, of course.

My 2026 Mazda MX-5 Miata Club is cursed with something I greatly detest in modern cars: black wheels. Why have a design at all when you can’t even see it? Much like black body paint, black wheels look great for the one second after it’s been cleaned. A quick layer of brake dust later and it turns into a black hole of nothingness. It’s unappealing, and I have no idea why it is so en vogue in the car world.

My 2019 Volkswagen GTI also came fitted with black wheels, and I swap those out with the equivalent style painted in silver. The only trouble is I had to wait five months for the set to be produced and shipped from the fatherland Germany. Painful.

This fourth generation of the MX-5 actually were fitted with silver colored wheels from the factory. The 2016 to 2018 model year of the Sport trim had beautiful eight-spoke 16-inch wheels in silver. Starting with the 2019 model year, Mazda painted those same wheels in, you guess it, black. Yuck.

Because it’s been so long since it was officially fitted on a car, buying those silver 16-inch wheels in the year of 2026 was a challenge. Mazda’s own parts warehouse had only two brand-new-in-box wheels remaining, with no ETA of getting more from Japan. Naturally, I bought those two wheels. To complete a whole set of four, I went to our favorite used car parts source: eBay. I bought two used wheels off of wrecked MX-5s that were in reasonable quality. Not perfect up close, but suffices a few feet away. Beggars absolutely cannot be choosers here.

The 2026 MX-5 Club came stock with 17-inch wheels, so I had to buy new tires as well for the 16-inch set. Only car enthusiasts would swap out a brand new set of wheels and tires. From a utilitarian perspective it is a huge waste. Then again, no one said this hobby of ours is anything but much money down the drain. I’ll do it again.

All in, it was an additional $1,800 spend just because I didn’t like the black color of the stock wheels. Completely worth it.

Say no to black wheels

One of the famous lines from the cult movie The Fast and the Furious is: “…overnight parts from Japan.” As if it were really that easy and quick to get car parts. Perhaps it indeed was back in those days, but in our modern tariff-filled turbulent times, the wait can be excruciating. And you’ll pay more for the product, too.

Unless of course you took advantage of Black Friday deals like I did. On the day after Thanksgiving 2025 I bought a set of wheels for my then new-to-me MK7 VW Golf GTI. It wasn’t anything special, just the same exact wheel as the original set that came with the car, but painted silver. The factory wheels were painted in black. I absolutely detest black-colored wheels, and don't understand why it is the current fashion in automotive-dom.

You look at the wheels of most new cars on sale, and the wheels are likely painted black. Why spend the R&D money at all on intricate wheel design when it all gets lost in a black circle. Worst, after a fresh coat of brake dust, black-colored wheels look like a decaying, rusting piece of iron. No thank you.

That was why I was determined to get different set of wheels. Thankfully Volkswagen sells the same design in silver, so that was the obvious choice. I am too old to be fussing with fitting aftermarket wheels. OEM is the best. They’ve certainly spent the most money developing the parts.

It wasn’t until last week that the wheels I ordered back in November of last year, arrived and ready for pick up. Five freaking months of waiting, because the wheels are made in Germany, and these days importing anything from outside the U.S. seems to be a hilarious crap-shoot. Overnight parts from Japan in 2026? It’ll probably get stuck in customs.

Never in this economy

The well regarded aftermarket wheel company Apex Wheels is having a winter sale. Nothing like clearing out some inventory at year end to make the numbers look good. Today is Boxing Day, so go out there and buy buy buy, folks! It’s not like you didn’t just spent a small fortune on Christmas gifts. And then people complain about the cost of living being so high. Have you perhaps ever considered not buying anything?

I get it: the temptations are everywhere. 25 percent off for a set of wheels I’ve been eyeing is trebly enticing. It also coincides nicely with the fact the BMW M2 absolutely needs a new set of tires (this rainy season is going to be interesting if I delay). The timing is perfect. At least I’m not throwing away a perfectly good set of tires for the sake of making my car look different than factory. 10 years ago me would have done so, but thankfully I did not have much money back then.

What’s stopping me from hitting the checkout button on those Apex wheels is the lack of space. Where the heck am I going to store the original set of wheels? If I knew for sure I will be keeping the M2 forever, I would sell them. But because I am not prepared to do so, I must keep the stock wheels around just in case. Living in high-rent, low space San Francisco, I barely have enough room for my everyday. There’s simply no space for frivolities such as two sets of wheels for one car.

I can see now how public storage places are so numerous and popular. Customers are essentially paying rent for more space. It just so happens that space is detached from their main abode. I of course do not want to end up like that. Rent for the main abode is high enough as is!

Sad to say then I am not buying a second set of wheels.

I feel you, bro

Last time I was back at my parents’ place, my mother told me someone stole all four wheels off the neighbor’s brand new car. She woke up one morning, peaked across the street, and there it was: a Honda Accord tiled on cinderblocks. Why would someone steal wheels off a plain Honda Accord? Because the Honda sedan is ubiquitous. There’s so many of them on the road that the demand for spare parts (law of large numbers vis a vis collision accidents) must be equally sizable. That means a fresh set of (stolen) wheels (plus nearly new tires) should easily fetch many hundreds of dollars.

I do feel bad for the neighbor. According to mom, it’s some young adult who moved into the downstairs in-law unit across the street. The Honda Accord was the first new car he’s ever bought with his own money. Pretty exciting, right? I can remember that joy when I drove my Subaru WRX STI home from the dealership. So much joyful emotion that I nearly had an anxiety attack. Anyways, it has to suck greatly to see something so new and cherished (and expensive) being messed with by amoral thugs. That undercarriage is forever marred by being jacked up on cinderblocks.

I can empathize with that neighbor, too. It seems that particular block of Visitacion Valley is cursed for new cars. Back when my parents bought a brand new Toyota Corolla for me to begin college (many thanks), another set of thugs threw a cinderblock at the driver-side A pillar, while it too was parked on the street. It was a complete violation of the most precious object me (at the time, anyways). While the damage was fixed promptly, the car never felt the same to me since that incident. Sentimental value vanished alongside the purity of an unmolested new car.

Hopefully that neighbor doesn’t love cars as much as I do. If that Honda Accord is just an appliance to him, he’s going to get over the incident rather quickly.