i have the same rims. good taste rick and i like the center caps!!!

 

Another instances, where picture really doesn't do the justice as to how great this looks.
I was very fortunate to see his car and wheels in person, and damn Rick's car looks incredibly beautiful.
Great guy with great taste and his meticulous attention to detail in his mods is quite striking.

Way to go Rick, job well done!

My car looks like an ugly duckling compare to his gracefully beautiful swan.

 

Rick,

I'm planning on getting the same wheels (they are SSR GT1s and not Integrals). I've contacted the Tire Rack and they informed me that the 17x7.5 with 225/45 and 17x8.5 with 245/40 would fit the car fine. Why did you choose 7" and 8" widths? Any chance of you making those center caps available for purchase? How about in silver with a black "S"?

I read somewhere that the 17" GT1s are around 16 lbs. or so (stocks are 18 lbs. front, 19 lbs. rear).

Although the Tire Rack recommends 45 mm offset for the front and rear, won't this look uneven with either the front or rear not looking correct?

 

My memory is a disaster, so don't trust anything I say until I check the paperwork . The wheels are whatever the Tire Rack web site says they are, not what I remember, so GT1s it is. The offsets are what the Tire Rack recommends: 45mm, front and rear, and I have to check on the rim width. I ordered them so long ago and had them sitting in my basement for about 6 months that I forgot. I know that I went with wider tires front and rear than stock and with whatever TireRack recommended on rim widths. I'll post the actual numbers when I can check later today.

IMO, the wheels look great with this offset. The outside of the rears are flush with the outside extremities of the bodywork and look much more agressive than stock yet still tasteful, I think.

I don't think I could sell these center caps because I don't think the stock caps can be purchased separately and it's just too much hand work to make it possible to sell them at a decent price. But its fairly easy to do, so you could make them for your own car and customize them as you wish (for example, in different colors or with the Honda logo).

Here's what I did. The stock SSR plastic center caps are concave, so I sanded them to roughen the surface a bit, then poured two-part resin (the kind used to coat bartops, available at Lowe's and HomeDepot) into them to create a level surface. I cured the resin under a 100 watt lightbulb (this shortens the curing time by about 24 hours), then spray painted the surface red. Then, after the paint had dried under the same 100 watt bulb, I stenciled on the S in bright silver (the S stencil was a portion of one the large S2000 stencils I had made many months ago). After the silver S dried I poured on a second final coat of bar top resin to protect and create a lens for the painted surfaces. I let the whole thing cure for another 24 hours, then cleaned the drips and excess resin off the underside of the caps and pushed the things back into place on the wheels. Voila! The whole project was completed in two days and took about 2-3 hours of time (the rest was just waiting for the resin and paint to cure).

These center caps should be extremely durable and will not fade, chip, or otherwise deteroriate under normal use. I'll post more pictures later today when I can take them.

BTW, my purchase of these wheels and the whole center cap idea was inspired by Tom Fota (Tom, I'll do this for your center caps, if you want), who posted pictures of the SSR wheels on his car long ago and who traded email messages with me about the center caps long before I ever had the wheels (I had this project in mind before my car was even delivered).

Randy Kim is too kind! Thanks for the compliment Randy. I think your car looks great, too, and I'm sorry you had to leave before the drive.

 

Rick- As everyone else has mentioned the center caps added a nice touch to the car. You're so very creative and I like seeing what you're going to do next. When you post your next set of pics (which I hope you do soon) can you show us some with the whole car in view? I'd like to get the whole picture in view. Thanks again Rick for sharing your creativeness with us. Us Baltimore boys must have something in our blood hee hee

 

I'm having trouble posting the new pictures from my home computer. I'll have to do it from the office tomorrow morning.