Melted Wheel Center Caps

[JetFuelOnly]

I've also melted centercaps before. But mine were from another wheel vendor on another car (Rohanna). It was a very hot track day, over 100F. These days I remove my caps as some aren't cheap! Also, as they deform from heat they may fall off or just become a bit loose.

[Treemagnet]

I assumed extreme heat was the reason our wheel weights kept disappearing and now it makes sense why I'm the only one still tracking with wheel caps....well, no longer.

[WillyDaP]

Running W2W you needed to remove wheel caps regardless if they were metal or ABS plastic since heat would often melt or even help dislodge ( metal caps ) and having one fly up and hit a car at 100 mph or more could cause serious damage or issues. I have melted way too many wheel weights and over the years it has become a habit to tape them also - heat resistant tape is best. If you use an aggressive racing pad that in combination with sticky rubber generates more gs , both sideways and stopping , so more and more folks are seeing weights come loose from heat or completely come off. The heat generated by all these forces is also why many of us recommend wheels like Apex, Forgeline , etc. with a knurled lip as the tires get hot enough they can rotate on the wheel.

I will echo the rotor issue as my only real complaints on my new Cayman GTS is Porsche using the idiotic drilled rotors ( commonly called poseur rotors by many Trackrats ) since anyone who has tracked for any period of time knows they crack around all those goofy little holes. Ford did the same thing with the GT 350 and surprisingly a bunch of us who had them mentioned this over and over to a couple or key Engineers and they finally went over to a slotted rotor. Plenty of high quality two piece rotors out there, though I prefer Girodisc as they are made in the US, so you know where the steel is coming from.

[blueline]

Girodisc makes great products and their quality is excellent. However, AP Racing has the historical and race-bred chops along with the products - clutches, discs, calipers and other directly related products.

Their continuing history as a purely British company dates back to 1920 and their racing involvement goes back to the Auto Union days, followed by much success over the years in all forms of racing, most notably GP and F1 for Lotus, Ferriari and others.

The AP Racing division was bought by Brembo in 2000 with the AP pro racing division concentrating now in F1, GT and Rally while Brembo does those plus IndyCar, NASCAR, and more. Both Brembo and AP Racing do about every other form of auto racing too, plus OEM with AP supplying Aston Martin, Bugatti, Caterham, Ferrari, Koenigsegg, Mclaren, Ford Performance and others. My feeling is that AP is at the pinnacle with their technology and quality.

They have an excellent website with significant tech data, most of which is way over my head. All I can really say is that I'm am incredibly impressed with their performance braking products. I used Wilwood Big Brake Race for 10 years on the Z06 and they have excellent products too, but nothing I've used so far measures up to what I'm seeing with AP.

https://apracing.com/

https://apracing.com/about/our-history

[WillyDaP]

No argument about AP, yet I would put Girodisc rotors right up there with them when it comes to that specific braking product. We were switching folks from Brembo, Stoptech, etc. on some of the racing Vipers we ( Woodhouse Dodge ) worked on because we were getting the same or similar results in virtually all cases and we had the surety that we were getting US Steel. Overall the top brands are so very close that often the benefit is pricing and access to parts. With Girodisc on the West Coast one usually gets great service and during a period of tariffs against Chinese steel they were solidly the place to go for rotors for awhile as so many companies had shortages.

Now days, the top names are all so close and one would be hard pressed to say anything negative about any of them, imho. AP has a long history, as does Brembo, but that competitive market has made it great for us as race inspired buyers.