What Are the Pros and Cons of Magnesium Wheels?



You might have heard your father say he ran a sweet set of mags back in the day, and you probably wondered what the heck he was talking about. Well, magnesium was once king of the hill when it came to lightweight materials for wheels.To get more news about Alloy Forged Wheels, you can visit nnxwheels.com official website.

If you're like me, however, the Le Mans disaster of 1955 is the first thing to come to mind when you think about magnesium and automobiles. There are some inherent dangers of making wheels out of this flammable material. They have even been banned for use in some motorsports due to their history.
However, magnesium wheels still exist to this day because there are ways to reduce the risks. For one, the wheels are magnesium alloy, meaning they aren't completely made from one material. Calcium is often added to the alloy, which counteracts the magnesium's flammable nature.

Even if it's not quite as common as it once was, you can still obtain magnesium alloy wheels. Its primary benefits include its lightweight and superior dampening properties, making for a smoother ride. However, it is something of an exotic wheel material, and you can expect to pay a premium because of it.
Magnesium also has a shelf life, so you don't want to use them after so many years of age. Magnesium corrodes fairly rapidly, and the structure of the wheel is compromised because of it. So, if you can score a set of mags from the glory days, it's better to repurpose them as wall-hangers than to put them anywhere near your car.

Carbon fiber is one of the best options for performance wheels. Most of today's high-performance vehicles, such as the Chevrolet Z06 Corvette, Ford Shelby Mustang GT350 and GT500, Ferarri 488 GTO, Koenigseggs, and Porsche 911 Turbo S either come standard with carbon-fiber wheels or offer them as an option.

There's no question that carbon fiber stands out for a performance build because it's stronger than steel and lighter than aluminum. You’ll have wheels that help the vehicle in all areas of performance without having to worry about their resilience to adverse conditions on the track.
That isn't to say carbon-fiber wheels are ideal for day-to-day use. They are generally intended for track use. The owner of a Shelby GT500 equipped with carbon-fiber wheels learned that when he hit something hard on a typical roadway.

As great as carbon fiber is, it's brittle. It doesn't flex like steel or aluminum and will shatter under excessive forces. We can't say what the driver of that Shelby ran into, so there's no way to know if other materials would've survived, but we do know that the brittleness is an issue.
The owner of that Shelby had to shell out an excess of $7,000 for one wheel. That reminds us of the other drawback to carbon fiber wheels: the expense. Carbon fiber is neither cheap nor common for use in wheels. That means setting up your car with a set is going to demand a fortune. That paired with the structural concerns makes for a wheel that's not worth it for the average street-driven vehicle.