Hello everyone, hope you are well.
I didn't update the thread for 5 years but let me tell you, some more iterations were made on the wheels and Ritz. And finally, I stopped after hitting the sweet spot.
It was January 2017 when I returned from England after completing my higher studies. And it was time that our beloved Lancer needed a new set of tyres. Lancer was then running on 185/70R13 Federal SS731 tyres on stock 13” steel rims. As Ritz tyre size goes perfectly on lancer ( stock 175/80R13 --> 185/70R14), I decided to get new tyres on Ritz and donate the still good existing tyres to Lancer as it is our low runner. I went for the same Michelin XM2 in the same size for Ritz. Meanwhile, I got an idea to change color from matt black to silver as now I wanted the car to look clean and stock. Well, it was the time when OEMs started giving black/machined black wheels as standard in many cars, but I was done with the black looks.
Traded off Lancer's existing tyres + 13” stock rims and put existing Michelin tyres on Lancer compatible Renault Logan 14” steel rims and mounted on Ritz temporarily. I started exploring the option for powder coating. I talked to a few shops that do it, checked their setups and gave the wheels to one of them. The guy said he would remove old paint with chemicals, taking out bare metal and later will do silver color powder coating.
Two days later, I went to pick up my wheels and got disappointed to see the pathetic finish. There were hard spots like that of welding spatter. Most probably, he didn't cleaned/surfaced them very well. Anyway, I paid him whatever he deserved for the job and got the new Michelin tyres fitted.
At this time, I wanted to make hub centric rings for Ritz. Hub diameter for Apollo Acelere wheels is 73.1 mm and outer diameter of Ritz hub is 54.1 mm. I created a rough CAD model just for a rough idea of how the rings would look. For the making, I got a mild steel pipe length with appropriate inner and outer diameter from market, mounted it on lathe and made four hub centric rings.
Few days passed, but that poor paint finish on wheels would bite me every day. I was not happy with it and decided to refinish it. The challenge was to remove the thick powder coating which is quite hard compared to the normal paint. Secondly, now I wanted to do everything by myself (DIY) as I was fed up with poor workmanship of some people I came by. I borrowed die grinder from my uncle and along with a variety of attachments and sandpapers (wet & dry) from market to remove powder coating. Process was very time taking. It needed attention to detail and of course a lot of elbow grease. Finally, a good quality metallic silver aerosol bottle paint did a great job. This time, I could do only one wheel a day compared to all 4 wheels in a day the last time when I painted the wheels matt black. Tip – use gloves while working with sandpapers as after 1 or 2 days , you will start feeling etching in your fingertips, sandpapers cut your skin.
Wheels were refitted on car. Finish looked way better than that of the dull silver powder coating.
Going forward to October 2017, our lancer kept growing on me more and more. Decided to swap wheels + tyres. Also, we thought of selling Ritz in near future as firstly, it was already 9 years old diesel car, so was going to be problematic for Delhi-NCR region where I work. Secondly, it had completed 1.5 lac kms mark at that time and still hold good market value in Punjab.
After swapping the wheels in Lancer, I made another set of hub-centric rings as per Lancer’s 56.1 mm hub outer diameter.
These were the final looks of Ritz with Renault Logan rims. Hub centric rings are still recommended with non-stock steel rims although for this very iteration/application, I skipped it. Trust me, I felt the slight unevenness in ride because of not using hub centric rings. For your reference, Renault/Nissan rims have hub diameter of 60.1 mm (if I could recall correctly). Good thing about Logan steel rims is its offset which is ET43 which looks rather good. To sum up various wheel offsets, Ritz stock wheel offset = ET50, Hyundai Verna wheels I used were ET46, the Apollo acelere wheels (now on Lancer) have offset of ET38.
And I think that’s it, about Ritz and its wheels. We sold the Ritz in March 2018 to someone known. We drove the car for 1.67 lac kms. It was a great city car and was very reliable. One can call it a beater car. My dad still misses its high commanding seating, ride quality and great maneuverability. Only sore point I felt was its turbo lag which was irritating. Steering was vague (I drive a Lancer and a Cedia) and overall build quality was just average. Overall a fantastic hatchback.