Mugen RNR's on my Insight...

[Blue-Civic-Hybrid]

Well, I got tired of looking at my stock OEM wheels on the Insight and I just got another set of wheels for my track car that I am building. The Mugens i just recently had custom powder coated hammered bronze and just put on some brand new Falken tires. Well, let's get to the pics!

Here is my little track car build with her brand new shoes on...




Then I picked up some nice 15x8 for the Miata, so the Mugens had no home..


And here they are on the Insight!!

[Blue-Civic-Hybrid]

Now I know how some people will say the Mugens will kill my gas mileage, but I just want to do a real world experiment. For anyone who really cares, I weighed the wheels prior to installing them on the insight just to see the difference.

Stock OEM Insight wheels on my high tech and super accurate bathroom scale...hehe


The scale shows approximately 27 pounds with the tires...


Here are the sweet 15x6.5 Mugen RNRs, the rims alone without tires weigh right around 9.5 lbs last time I weighed them.


Scale shows about 29 pounds for the Mugens...


Well, now to drive about 1000 miles and see how bad the mileage loss is... the price of fashion...

[Blue-Civic-Hybrid]

I even have the stock hollow spoke Mazda Miata wheels that came with the car when I got it, so these might make their way on the car eventually with some new tires.

Here are the OEM hollow spoke Miata wheels... 14x6 which also way about 10 lbs per wheel.


Also shows about 29 pounds with cheap tires on them...

[Blue-Civic-Hybrid]

Well, here is my update for the Mugens, after over 1000 miles of driving, I have definitely loss quite a bit of mileage. I normally drive/cruise on the freeway around 70 to 80 MPH and that nets me 58 to 59 MPG easily, with the OEM wheels.

With the Mugens driving the same way, I only got 50 MPG and the best I got was 53 mpg but driving much slower.

So I lost about 8 to 9 MPG per gallon! Well that wasn't gonna cut it so I reluctantly put the OEM wheels back on...but not after I got a little crazy painting them!!

Supplies for some painting!!


Using the clearcoat stripper, I just sprayed it on and peeled off the clear coat!

[Blue-Civic-Hybrid]

Well, here are some more prep pics...
Sanded and ready for some paint...


Thanks to some newspaper and some good tape...


BAM! Painted the center caps too..


All 4 done...

[02insight]

Interesting test on the wheels. I noticed that you dont have the original re92's on the insight rims, so the difference in mpg must be only from the few pounds of weight difference. The insight rims with the re92's weigh about 24lbs I think

But nice job on the repaint of the wheels. After you stripped the clear, did you consider leaving them bare aluminum and just polish them? I am thinking about doing that since my clear coat is peeling on the wheels anyway.

Did you re-clear the wheels after painting them?

[aisbell]

The OEM wheels are more aerodynamic than any spoked wheel, so it's not just weight that determines the fuel efficiency of wheels.

But I'd be very surprised if the wheels themselves are to blame for the significant fuel efficiency loss that you experienced. It wasn't clear to me whether the tires were the same on your OEM and Mugen wheels. If not, that difference might explain most of your fuel efficiency loss.

[Cf-105]

I'm guessing it's tires also that made the difference. What are you running on them?

BTW, thanks for sharing your observations and all the pictures.

[Blue-Civic-Hybrid]

Thanks for the comments! As for the tires I am running, they are Riken Raptors on the Insight wheels. Currently I keep them pumped up to about 40 PSI and even thought I have logged about 50,000 miles on them, I still get about 57 to 59 MPG easily.

The tires on the Mugens are Falken RT 615's, a semi performance summer tire with excellent grip. They are 195/50 R15's so they stand about 1/4 inch taller than the Raptors 14's.

[spets]

The MPG drop can easily be attributed to the RT615s. They are stickier and more draggier than all season tires.