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Recently I went over to CCW and talked to John about their manufacturing process, as you are aware, i'm a big fan of CCW and Phoenix has been using them for years, they are extremely robust, being forged I've even beat some of the barrels back round with a sledge hammer and block of wood when I was in a pinch for wheels.
John has a great product and has done some work for the OEMs and other wheel manufacturers, he also has some future projects in the works that I'm unable to photograph or talk about. CCW also exceeds manufacturers specification by an extremely large amount but in order to not open up a can of worms he asked me to limit discussion on that as well. I can tell you that he's capable of placing extreme loads on specific areas of the wheel to measure resistance to things like curbing (specific points are known in the engineering world as "moments") and the wheel's reaction to it. The measurement standards are incredible...I can tell you that.
There are currently three general types of wheels out there, cast, rotary forged and forged, each type has an application and as long as you don't exceed the design specifications of that particular wheel you will be fine. To sort of give you a guide to the types, think of cast as "particle board" and forged as an "oak block" that will give you some idea of the difference in wheels. The "rotary forged" wheels use a forged barrel (the round rim) with a cast center, as far as CCW is concerned they should be treated the same as cast style wheels. Another difference is that forgings will tend to crack or deform and give the driver some warning, cast wheels, or cast centers, can fail catastrophically. I have witnessed this first hand when one of our mustangs came in with hairline cracks after hitting several curbs (Sebring..really?!) we were able to change out the wheel. Still, it pays to inspect the wheels after every race to insure there are no problems.
CCW wheels are relatively heavy, they can be made lighter simply by machining more materiel out of the wheel, but this would then make them weaker. As an example of the kind of expectation for a modern race wheel , consider this. A wheel built in the 90s had to work with a 1G loading, which was fairly common back then, now days cars are approaching 2Gs which means the wheel loading has increased 4 times (load increases exponentially), add the camber that most competition cars run today and you will find the inside of the wheel being excessively loaded, this is one reason why it is important to measure specific "moments" on the wheel during quality control tests. Add to this aero loading and the load goes up even more. This is one of the considerations behind CCW's "hybrid" wheel.
these are just a few of the wheels that were used in quality control tests at CCW.
CCW wheels are forged at a mill to a specification written by CCW, this spec requires the forging to be created in an 8 thousand TON press. When they come off the press they have sort of a "sterling silver" appearance.
Newly arrived forgings for CCW
CCW quality control checks are done at every level of the process. CCW produces about 400 wheels per month, an OEM will produce 4 thousand in a day so they pull randomly from the production line. CCW qualifies every wheel at every level of manufacture.
Here the machining process starts using the blanks in the foreground.
Just a few of the many machine tools at CCW
This wheel has received it's primary machining, a quality control check and is ready for the next process.
In this case the wheel is going to be one of CCWs new "hybrid" wheels, which will incorporate the best attributes from their forged wheels mated with a modular style outer wheel rim.
The wheel parts are stored in this room
and a close up of the modular half of the wheel, these are available in different widths, if you choose a different back spacing that has to be machined into the aluminum forging.
The two halves are then mated together depending on the customer's request for back spacing, diameter, bolt pattern and etc. The holes for the wheel studs in CCW wheels are machined during the process and are not drilled after the fact. This happens to be a black on black hybrid wheel, the wheel to the left in the photo is how a black on aluminum wheel would look. Note that quality control has rejected this wheel.
These are 1 piece wheels and are ready for final finishing, if these are competition wheels they will be shot peened to relive any stress areas, if they are street wheels they will be polished.
A set of polished "street" wheels
Here is a video of the entire machining process from start to finish of a CCW "monoblock" wheel
http://vimeo.com/70932294
Clearly CCW wheels are some of the most expensive, however, if you amortize over the lifetime of the wheel, realizing they will last longer than most, they are very cost effective. If you consider the amount of hand work and quality control that goes into each wheel they are very much worth the price.
Here's a link to their website, if you click on "gallery" you can plug in different year and make of cars..
http://www.ccwheel.com/gallery.php
John has a great product and has done some work for the OEMs and other wheel manufacturers, he also has some future projects in the works that I'm unable to photograph or talk about. CCW also exceeds manufacturers specification by an extremely large amount but in order to not open up a can of worms he asked me to limit discussion on that as well. I can tell you that he's capable of placing extreme loads on specific areas of the wheel to measure resistance to things like curbing (specific points are known in the engineering world as "moments") and the wheel's reaction to it. The measurement standards are incredible...I can tell you that.
There are currently three general types of wheels out there, cast, rotary forged and forged, each type has an application and as long as you don't exceed the design specifications of that particular wheel you will be fine. To sort of give you a guide to the types, think of cast as "particle board" and forged as an "oak block" that will give you some idea of the difference in wheels. The "rotary forged" wheels use a forged barrel (the round rim) with a cast center, as far as CCW is concerned they should be treated the same as cast style wheels. Another difference is that forgings will tend to crack or deform and give the driver some warning, cast wheels, or cast centers, can fail catastrophically. I have witnessed this first hand when one of our mustangs came in with hairline cracks after hitting several curbs (Sebring..really?!) we were able to change out the wheel. Still, it pays to inspect the wheels after every race to insure there are no problems.
CCW wheels are relatively heavy, they can be made lighter simply by machining more materiel out of the wheel, but this would then make them weaker. As an example of the kind of expectation for a modern race wheel , consider this. A wheel built in the 90s had to work with a 1G loading, which was fairly common back then, now days cars are approaching 2Gs which means the wheel loading has increased 4 times (load increases exponentially), add the camber that most competition cars run today and you will find the inside of the wheel being excessively loaded, this is one reason why it is important to measure specific "moments" on the wheel during quality control tests. Add to this aero loading and the load goes up even more. This is one of the considerations behind CCW's "hybrid" wheel.
these are just a few of the wheels that were used in quality control tests at CCW.
CCW wheels are forged at a mill to a specification written by CCW, this spec requires the forging to be created in an 8 thousand TON press. When they come off the press they have sort of a "sterling silver" appearance.
Newly arrived forgings for CCW
CCW quality control checks are done at every level of the process. CCW produces about 400 wheels per month, an OEM will produce 4 thousand in a day so they pull randomly from the production line. CCW qualifies every wheel at every level of manufacture.
Here the machining process starts using the blanks in the foreground.
Just a few of the many machine tools at CCW
This wheel has received it's primary machining, a quality control check and is ready for the next process.
In this case the wheel is going to be one of CCWs new "hybrid" wheels, which will incorporate the best attributes from their forged wheels mated with a modular style outer wheel rim.
The wheel parts are stored in this room
and a close up of the modular half of the wheel, these are available in different widths, if you choose a different back spacing that has to be machined into the aluminum forging.
The two halves are then mated together depending on the customer's request for back spacing, diameter, bolt pattern and etc. The holes for the wheel studs in CCW wheels are machined during the process and are not drilled after the fact. This happens to be a black on black hybrid wheel, the wheel to the left in the photo is how a black on aluminum wheel would look. Note that quality control has rejected this wheel.
These are 1 piece wheels and are ready for final finishing, if these are competition wheels they will be shot peened to relive any stress areas, if they are street wheels they will be polished.
A set of polished "street" wheels
Here is a video of the entire machining process from start to finish of a CCW "monoblock" wheel
http://vimeo.com/70932294
Clearly CCW wheels are some of the most expensive, however, if you amortize over the lifetime of the wheel, realizing they will last longer than most, they are very cost effective. If you consider the amount of hand work and quality control that goes into each wheel they are very much worth the price.
Here's a link to their website, if you click on "gallery" you can plug in different year and make of cars..
http://www.ccwheel.com/gallery.php
