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Old 03-11-2014, 08:59 PM   #5
BrokenLinkage
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Join Date: Apr 2011
Location: Alabama
Posts: 487
I bought these. A while back, at a somewhat better price. I am very pleased with the quality of their construction and appearance.

The weight savings is trivial, even for unsprung rotating mass.

But I got tired of cleaning rust stains off the very darned expensive aluminum wheels, and having rusty lugs on otherwise fairly attractive wheels. My car is no garage queen, beauty queen, or any other kind of queen. But I'm planning to keep this car for a long time, and I just couldn't see cyclically repainting my lug bolts, nor rebuying new ones at some interval, just for cosmetic reasons. Doing the math of maintenance, once the cost of my time is factored in for over 10+ years of ownership/maintenance, made the decision to purchase these seem reasonable.

How much do people spend on body kits, re-sprays, or different wheels, just for the sake of appearance? And if they get hit by a pickup, can they just expect to simply remove these now-damaged components from their totaled car to recoup the expense of the upgrade? How many wrecks have you seen that damaged the lug bolts? Now imagine yours are even stronger than OEM, rustproof and shiny 10 yrs after you bought them, ready for transfer to your new ride or for sale to some other enthusiast.

Or to put it in a different perspective, my car had a sticker of about $72k when it was new. So adding <1% to the total capital cost for something that permanently improves the appearance and decreases the maintenance burden, while at the same time adding strength to a critical component and slightly decreasing weight, doesn't sound so unreasonable.

Your priorities may be different.

If I knew for sure I was never going to track my car, I might consider the slightly less strong and slightly heavier but equally rustproof stainless lug bolts.

But with the wisdom of hindsight, I would look hard at the titanium lugs offered by Maxspeed, for less money than Tikore, and with each set all composed of matching theft-resistant lugs. And regardless, get the 2-piece version.
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