Image Wheels Billet UltraLite - A long-winded story
TL;DR if you order those, ask for a 59mm centre bore
I had been eyeing those since probably April (2024), and my friend J. ordered a set around that time. As for his, I would have seen them black with a polished rim on my car.
That specific "Billet Ultralite" model is a three piece billet alloy wheel that promised some serious weight saving close to 2kg per wheel. Plot twist, in the 14" size they actually offer no improvement compared to the stock 14" Caterham Juno wheels. They are just on par with them (10.25kg with tyre), which is actually not bad at all as you wouldn't want to add weight to the lightest Caterham ever produced.
Their design looked original but I since stumbled upon the WESMO by BBS wheels, that look very similar. While they are dedicated to the Caterham, there is no suitable size for the 170.
Image Wheels also scratch that itch of willing to own a set of bespoke MB Racing Wheels as seen on race Minis. Sadly MB does not seem to be in business anymore.
As the planning and manufacturing time for those marvels of British craftmanship is close to 3 months, I thought that placing an order in December to get them for the next season was the smart move.
J. specified his set as a perfect match for the original Juno : 4.5 x 14" ET39, 4x100 and chose black perimeter bolts and gloss black centre caps. They were delivered in August, and he opted to have Nankang Ultra Sport NS2 fitted by a local tyre shop. They looked gorgeous, although not improving the weight in any way, which was his first letdown.
But the worst was yet to come, as they didn't fit his Caterham 170R.
At 54.3mm, the centre bore was too small to fit the front hubs. To Image Wheels credit, they offered to graciously take the rims apart, re-work and re-assemble them. But the gift of Brexit and the hassle of removing the tyres, then shipping 4 wheels back and forth between Munich and Birmingham was a bit much.
That size of 54.3mm was known to be compatible with the Caterham 160 of other Image customers. Going down the rabbit hole confirmed this is actually the size of the Citroën C1/Peugeot 107/Toyota Aygo wheels I'm using with winter tyres. But it does not take long to see that the front hubs are identical to the ones of the 170, with a protruding center around the bearing. What happened is that the 160/165 were fitted with 3mm wheels spacers, giving a flush flange.
During Autumn, various machining shops were contacted with no success, as nobody wanted to take the risk or responsibility of machining that measly 2.5mm x 3mm chamfer. A some point in October, I pushed my friend to give a try with the 3mm spacers. While it finally allowed to mount the wheels properly, they were grinding against the wheel arches.
Defeated by the ordeal, and knowing there would be no problem fitting them to a Caterham 160/165 thanks to their larger front wheel arches, the Image wheels were put on sale at a very fair price, that was lowered even further a bit later. All the 165 owners within reach were actually reached, and I told my friend that by the end of December I would either order a new set as planned, or snag his if it was still available.
As the listing was now 2 months old and no 165 owner was interested enough, I asked J. to provide me with his bank account number, and proceeded with the wire transfer. Just FYI BNP Paribas planned to ask me 15€ for that transaction, while Deutsche Bank did it for free -but gave me a call on the next morning to make sure it was legitimate and I was not the victim of a scam, good on them-.
With Christmas/New year holidays around the corner and a forecast of proper winter weather in the coming days, I understood on Friday 20th at 10pm that the best solution was to go to Munich right away. The round-trip from Liège is around 1500km and could either be done over 2 days, or in just 24 hours if we booked an hotel half-way with a check-in at 1am.
So I looked on booking.com, where most of the hotels have to be checked-in before 10pm. But I knew from our last family trip that B&B hotels have an automated 24/24 check-in. Luck has it that they also operate in Germany, and there was one available close to where I intented to split the trip.
I told my girlfriend to dress and pack a backpack because we were leaving right now.
We reached the B&B Hotel of Kaiserslautern around 1am as planned, had some rest, woke up around 8am for a shower then continued the trip.
While the first leg had been easy peasy alone in the night, the Saturday before Christmas was packed with people going to ski holidays in Austria with their rooftop cargo carriers. But it was ok overall.
After traversing the Weinstrasse (german wine route), the highlight of the trip was the sight of a Concorde plane next to his Tu-144 retarded cousin. They are both on display at the Technik Museum Sinsheim, visible from the Autobahn. A bit further were road signs for Legoland.
Then the mountains appeared in the distance, we were getting close to Munich.
As I didn't want to interrupt my friend's family lunch, we stopped for some welcome currywurst just before noon. We drove the remaning hour -the Allianz Arena was quite the sight- and reached our destination at 1:30pm.
There we had the great pleasure to finally meet my fellow 170 owner in the flesh, have a coffee, a close look at his sublime 170R. We talked for about 2 hours then it was time to steal his precious wheels, not without making sure he was ok with that, and that it was still time for him to keep them. There would have been no hard feeling on my side, as the crazy escapade would have been a good story and we had seen the Concorde and drove across nice sceneries just for the price of 2 tanks of diesel and a hotel room.
We plan on meeting at some point next Summer for a nice Caterham trip, probably in the Black Forest on in the Alps, we'll see.
The road back was not as packed, allowing for some proper autobahn driving, but last half was under pouring rain and some strong wind, somewhat limiting the appetite for speed. We reached home just before 10pm, it just took us 24 hours instead of a full week-end. We were greeted by a short power outage, then the storm continued on Sunday and it even snowed in the evening, I'm really happy with the timing.
I have measured the 3mm spacers and they have a centre bore of 59mm, confirming there is just 2.5mm to shave. As the hole for the center cap is 60mm, it can be done on a lathe from the front side. I think I know the right machining shop capable of doing the work, nearby. And I'm ready to resort to the Dremel if left with no other choice.
I plan on fitting the centre caps from the Caterham Apollo and Orcus wheels, but have yet to confirm they are compatible. The story about the hub caps emblems is here, I finally got official 50mm badges.
The moral of the story is that people like us, involved, enthusiastic and technically inclined are not equipped with enough knowledge when it comes to all the intricacies of wheel dimensions and similar subjects. We really need a professional middle-man to know better and do it right on the first try.
(to be continued... here : machining and fitting)
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