Why do 17" wheel options kinda suck?

This here is the reason. 17” is jeep/tacoma/etc size and gets better lighter load options, while 18” gets 1 ton truck options that are usually overkill and weigh alot. The other reason is the brake calipers are very close at 17” and many manufacturers I believe just don’t make them vs a direct 18” to 18” replacement from OEM. Rockwarrior wheels are the shit, refurb your FB marketplace ones today.

 

Oh man, are you serious Clark! When did this happen? Now I have to sell some stuff to justify some 17” six shooters! It’s one of my favorite wheel designs.

 

These are great options. But it still boggles my mind with how insanely popular Rock Warrior wheels are why hasn't a wheel manufacture made copies of them. My icon six speeds are a close second but rock warrior wheels are just the perfect fit and finish.

 

Also love my vector 5s. +25 is a great offset in my opinion. And at $110 a pop when they have their garage sale, it’s probably the best deal you’ll find on a 17” wheel

 

Here is a page that lists all the Icon 17" wheels that fit the 2 and 2.5 gen Tundras:

https://www.iconvehicledynamics.com/products/?

These are the ones I have - 17" Icon Rebounds with +25 offset (mine are the Titanium color, but they also come in black or bronze, or at least they used to):

https://www.iconvehicledynamics.com/wheel/10645/icon-alloys-rebound/1817855557TT/?finishID=1358

I noticed the price on these has skyrocketed since I got mine a few years ago. If I had to do it over again, I'd get a different color than Titanium, maybe black or bronze, just to add a bit more contrast to my Silver Sky Tundra. But otherwise, they've been great and are only 30 lbs.

 

yeah theyre my faves too. that's what i got when i went to 37s and have been very happy with them. they tuck well with their +55 offset too without needing fiberglass fenders.

 

how's the durability? are they forged? if they were relatively light i'd consider them. rw are only 24 lbs each so really helps with unsprung weight/shocks performing well

 

Garage sale? Say more! I’m a wheel ho.

 

Durability seems good enough for me. I don’t think they’re forged but don’t quote me on that. These are a little heavier around 28 lbs I think.

They usually do an annual garage sale around February/March and announce it in their IG page. Last year they were offloading their over inventory of Vector 5s for $110 each

 

nice!

 

AFAIK, Icon doesn't offer any forged wheels and if they did, they wouldn't be sub $300. True forged wheels are around $600 per wheel, at minimum, for a non-beadlock. Flow formed wheels like RRWs are also not forged but they are a step up from a cast wheel due to the heat and pressure applied to widen the barrels.

 

You nailed it.

17" wheels provide more options for lighter duty tires, while virtually all of the 34" / 35"+ diameter tires for 18" wheels are much heavier load range E tires for heavy duty trucks.

Most wheel manufacturers are interested in mass production wheels to fit the widest range of vehicles possible. It's not particularly easy to make a 17" wheel with the correct offset, load rating and brake caliper clearance for the Tundra. One way to get the brake clearance would be to make the offset extremely low (i.e. +0mm or negative), so that the back pad (mounting surface of the wheel) is really thick (think of it as a built in wheel spacer). This moves the drop center (lowest point of the barrel) farther away from the top of the brake caliper providing more brake clearance. However, this also places the wheels really far out on the hub. The wheels stick out 2" - 3" past the edge of the fender, wheel well clearance is poor, and it puts extra stress and strain on the wheel bearings and axles.

Alternatively, I've seen certain Method wheels offered in 17" with positive offsets that technically clear the brakes on the Tundra, but adhesive wheel weights drag on the brake calipers because the drop center is too close to the caliper. These wheels can only be balanced statically on the inside plane, otherwise the brake caliper will shear off any stick on wheel weights once the truck gets rolling.

In order to get enough brake clearance + a proper load rating + a good, usable offset in 17", the wheels should really be flow formed or forged with a custom barrel design that has high brake clearance at the drop center. A flow formed or forged barrel can be manufactured in such a way to allow for all of the above. A typical cast wheel in 17" won't have these properties.

We had a custom mandrel manufactured for the barrel of our 17" Tundra flow formed wheels so that we could make a wheel with an appropriate load rating, high brake caliper clearance, and a relatively high offset for a good fit on the Tundra.

I think that most wheel manufacturers don't see the value in going through all of this to make a "niche" fitment, so that is why you don't see many 17" options for the Tundra.

Very serious Cousin Eddie (I got your Christmas Vacation reference )!

Glad you like the wheels! We came out with 17" Five Stars and Six Shooters for the Tundras a few months ago.

This is actually something I've been considering offering for quite some time. I intend to make a separate post in the coming days to get opinions from members of this forum. I have some ideas about how I'd like to make the wheels, but I want to get feedback from you all first.

 

@FNWheels when would you have the six shooters in 5x150 available in graphite gunmetallic?

 

No ETA yet, but it's in the plans. The 17x9" +25 5x150 Five Star has been the more popular / better selling 5x150 wheel for us thus far, so it's more likely that you'll see a gunmetal Five Star before the Six Shooter. That can change though if we get enough demand for gunmetal Six Shooters.

 

That would be awesome. I’m down for Rock Warriors. That spec wheel just fit right on my 2015.

 

Took my years to find some rw wheels on Facebook.
The previous owner had 18” methods.

 

Gunmetal Five Star patiently waiting crew here

The 17x8 +30 fit the bill I think too since I'd only plan on a 35x11.50 at most anyways

 

There is enough out there in 17" with up to 35mm offset but I agree that more would always be nice. I'm running 17" x 8.5" with 10mm offset and 285/70/17 KO2's and it looks great when it's clean but the sides of the truck are constantly coated in dirt, gravel dust, and mud. I'm going to probably bite the bullet and get something with a 35mm offset when it's time for tires.

I avoid seeing wheels I like that don't fit my sizing desires while shopping by filtering search results by the offset I'm looking for. I have considered going 18" just to make things easier, but nah... I like my 17's.

 

The 17x8" +30mm offset version will fit, but the center cap looks better in the 17x9" version.

The 17x8" version of the Five Star was designed to fit the Landcruiser 100 / Lexus LX470 with full float axles, so it has a taller center cap to fit over the front hubs on those vehicles. The wheels will fit the Tundra, but the 17x9" version with the flat cap looks better on the Tundra (in my opinion). Some people like the taller cap though, so it's purely a matter of preference.

 

Since it’s the internet I’m going to share my opinion that nobody asked for which is that gunmetal and bronze should be the default colors, and black an afterthought. Black is so 5 years ago.

I always spring for the more exotic color options because if I decide I want black, I can do it for $12 of plastidip and then when I’m sick of the black I can go back to the flashier/harder to duplicate color after 5 minutes with a pressure washer!

 

I appreciate your opinion, and I completely agree with you about different colors of wheels.

I began offering different types of bronze (anodized, matte or gloss), multiple shades of gunmetal, hyper silver, dark metallic blue and other colors of our wheels for Toyota trucks in 2004/2005. Most of the companies selling wheels today weren't even in existence in the 2000's but those that were definitely didn't offer much other than silver or black wheels. A lot people said we were "weird" to offer matte bronze wheels for Toyota trucks back then, and I distinctly recall more than a few customers telling us that matte bronze was for "rice rockets" and not trucks. Times definitely have changed.

Regarding these specific wheels : we looked at our most popular selling colors for the Tundra wheels in 2022 and 2023. Matte black was still #1, so we decided to only offer matte black initially for the 17x9" Five Star and 17x9" Six Shooter for the Tundra applications. We will be adding more color options this year, definitely a bronze and a gunmetal option.

I also have another 17" wheel that we're working on which I plan to offer in a gloss graphite gunmetal center with diamond cut (brilliant machined) lip. This wheel is going to be really sweet.

 

Seriously, for the amount of money people pay for RW, aftermarket companies are stupid not to make a similar design. Even if they were not quite as light, just having a similar design and offset would get attention. Not everyone is looking for crazy amounts of offset and all the downsides that come with it(scrub radius, tire clearance, etc)

 

All, I ended up getting a good deal on some Method MR705's in a 17" +35mm. While I would have liked it to be a bit more positive in the offset, its the closest to what I would like besides the RW and EvoCorse, but I just like the look on an LX570. From a technical standpoint I would like the RW but Im not sure they are my favorite look:

Not my truck but this is what inspired me to pull the trigger.




They will be wrapped in a set of 315/70R17 Goodyear Territory MT's.

 

That. Looks. Spectacular. A little PPF MIGHT be in order. But a little personality doesn’t hurt either.

 

If you are planning to make a RW copy like we talked before in this post, shut-up and take my money!!!!! Haha. Seriously though, I’m patiently waiting.

 

I really like my method 703’s in +35mm offset. They’re 17x8.5 and the sticky inner wheel weights clear my calipers, no problems with balancing with them in my experience. Allows me to mount a wide variety of C load tires which was my biggest driver in switching from 18” to 17” wheels. I’m currently running Toto AT3’s in 35”x12.5”x17” size and they’re pretty sweet. I’ll be upgrading to 37’s next set! I definitely still get more dirt, mud, and road junk on the truck sides than I did with the stock +60mm wheels, but it doesn’t bother me too much. I am not running fender flares or mud flaps either.

https://www.methodracewheels.com/co...oducts/703-matte-black?variant=33034699243581

 

This thread has me considering going from my 18s to 17s. Those Goodyear Territory tires are under $200 each which puts them at half price of any decent 18” tires.

 

I picked them up on Amazon for like $180 a piece with the extra 5% from my Prime card. full set of 5 was ~$875 before tax i think.

Im really struggling though over the wheels. I got those methods but I am still really wanting to find a set of Rock Warriors. I think they are the only 17" wheel I could run that will let me do the Tundra control arm swap and still be able to stuff the tire without cutting the fenders.

 

Here is why I was pissing and moaning so much about the offsets on 17" 5x150 wheels:



This is an LX570 with 35x12.5's on a stock +60mm wheel with a 1" spacer. Effectively a +35mm offset. They just barely tuck in the fenders when stuffed and I believe he even had to roll the lip slightly.

IDK if the Tundra has this same problem or if it can even really stuff 35's that hard, but there is no way you could stuff a +25, +10 or +0 wheel like this on a 200 series. You would either need to start cutting fenders or extend the bump stops aggressively, cutting into travel.

Also, after reading some more, a +35mm offset is just about ideal for a 35" tire in terms of returning the scrub radius back to factory spec.

 

In case anyone is interested, this is how the Lx turned out.



Just had to push the front and rear wheel well liners away from the tire to make room but otherwise the "315/70's" clear. No contact with body mounts or and other metal parts.