Is wheel weight all that important?

[oil pan 4]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQh56geU0X8

And that's all I have to say about those.

[jcp123]

Since we are posting video links...

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=W3KWU1qlfIM

In the first few minutes of dry talk about the design, he mentions a semi-hero of mine, Colin Chapman and the fact that the car handles BETTER with its dinky stock wheels and tyres than when he put bigger ones on them. The reason? Weight. No need to watch any more after that part, unless you really want to.

[basjoos]

Another physics effect of a heavier wheel that I haven't seen mentioned is the effect of increasing wheel weight on the behavior of the suspension. As wheel weight increases, its inertia increases, slowing down its maximum frequency of oscillation, and reducing the proportion of small, quick bumps that the suspension system can absorb. This puts more of the job of absorbing the smaller bumps in the road onto the pneumatic tire since the heavier wheel's increased vertical inertia prevents it from responding quickly enough to them.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing if you do a lot of driving on dirt, washboardy roads where a lightweight wheel would try to follow every curve of the washboard, putting a lot of stress on the suspension system. Conversely a heavy wheel would be unable to respond fast enough to follow every curve of the washboard, so the tire's sidewalls would flex to accommodate the bumps, sparing the suspension system, but you wouldn't want to be driving on a low aspect ratio tire under these conditions.