Project Toyota Supra MKIV: Part 19 – FIKSE Wheels is back!

The finish is as smooth to the touch as it looks. It’s remarkable. The silver, however, isn’t painted—it’s a unique, newer process by FIKSE, and I’m told our Supra is the first to get them. “For your particular wheel we take the center of the CNC machine and then water-blast it with a media that produces a very subtle metallic surface on the center itself. We then clear-coat it, which leaves a metallic opaque look that we call ‘Blasted Silver’ “, says Gladstone.

When asked about the manufacturing process, this is what Gladstone had to say: “All FIKSE wheels are three-piece 6061-T6 forged aluminum including our rim shells which makes our wheels exceedingly strong. We can do a color combination with any of the parts that make up the wheel whether we anodize or paint or polish. We also have a process, which we call Techni Polish, where we diamond-cut the face of the wheel and then apply a ceramic clear coat called Cerakote. We worked with Cerakote to develop this protective barrier specifically for Fikse wheels.”

Hmm, I may have heard of Cerakote, and may [or may not] have done business with them in the past. Wink…wink…

Having the assembly bolts on the inside gives a FIKSE three-piece wheel its signature clean look, and it’s a design that was fairly unique to the company for a while. If anyone was thinking why not go with the split-spoke Profil-5S (since it looks lighter), when you look at the back of an FM5 or Profil-5 we can see there’s a lot of material removed on the back of each spoke to lighten the wheel, almost looking like the Profil-5S perse. For 18×9 and 18×11.5, each wheel Profil-5 weighed 23.5-lb, which is light for a fairly wide, three-piece 18-in wheel that’s also known for its strength.
Here’s an inside pic of the barrel, where we can see where the lip is joined and sealed to it.
One thing that surprised me was how wide these wheels run. The front is an 18×9 (left), compared to the 18×9 Forgestar we’d taken off (right). That’s about a ¾-in difference in overall width.
Zohr mobile tire service is one of the trusted sources in these parts of the Midwest among the high-end car enthusiasts and track junkies. The old wheels were sold and are now spinning on a gent’s sweet Mazda FD RX-7 in Minnesota.
Zohr’s technician, Mario, took extra care and did a great job not scratching any of the wheels. The original Nitto NT101 R-compound tires that I featured a couple of years ago—sized 245/40-18 front and 305/35-18 rear—went back on. They have been awesome. Zohr services the greater Kansas City area and also some parts in Texas, including Dallas, Fort Worth and Houston.

Now let’s see how they turned out, shall we?

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7 comments

  1. Wow! What a great story and throw back. I remember that black e36 so well and often site it as being the perfect turbo setup at the time for the M3.

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    1. Can’t thank you enough for your feedback. With stories like this one tends to wonder if it’s too much for the general audience. I knew for the some of the younger crowd it was going to be, but it meant enough to me that–in hopes of it being for a few others who understand–that I wanted to relive it all, and try to sincerely portray in these pages what I was feeling. And the start of the just-announced GTR R33 project will be very nostalgic for me as well. That should be up any day (already completed the first 3 parts). I’ve really enjoyed these past few weeks of writing, also having not done so in a few years. Thanks Andre!

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  2. I like it when wheels serve a purpose other than looking cool.
    Heartwarming to read about the history of FIKSE as I´m also employed in the automotive aftermarket.

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  3. Man that is SUCH a throwback! I remember having all those EE and CC magazines. Maybe still have some at my parents house. The first time I saw Fikse wheels was on an FD RX7 built by a renown RX7 tunner, maybe Pettit? They were polished FM5s on a yellow car…gorgeous! I ended up being between Fikses or Kinesis wheels for my ride back them but ended up going with Kinesis K10s.
    Had a bit of a run in with AA back in the day too. I applied for an internship there in college but ended up down the road a ways at Mosler Engineering building the molds/parts for the first MT900s.
    This article definitively brought back a whole lot of memories!

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    1. haha, yes! I remember Kinesis, too. It was the Kinesis/Fikse/HRE/Forgeline battle, it seemed. So get this, AA had a customer that needed to get rid of his K20s. Had them for sale, and no one bought them. In his impatience, he asked AA to find someone to straight-up trade them for E36 M3 contour ***stockers***, because he wanted to go back to stock. They called me and I jumped in that car so fast lol. So that’s how I ended up with my Kinesis K20s (on my first Estoril blue M3). They were impeccable, too. Yes, that’ll never happen again. And yes the Moslers (Raptor was it?). That was hot stuff. There’s one I see here in KC a couple times a year.

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