I do always chuckle at the term, "real ROTA's."
@Toasty, I get what you're saying, but it isn't about insta cred, rather safety and durability. Have you ever seen an exploded ROTA/rep and the aftermath on the vehicle on which it was, or one that was in an accident?
I think a lot of that has to do with wheel design and particularly passenger car wheels being used to party as this is where the majority of the internet breaks it's wheels.
Of course if you buy cheapie guy thin spoke wheels they'll likely break. You can tell just by looking at some designs that strength was never even considered, the other factor is that some people put wheels on their car that are not rated for the load. Yes you can put passenger car wheels on a Jeep, a wheel designed to carry a Honda. You can put wheels designed to look flashy on an Accord on your Evo and go motorcross with poor results.
My point here is that Monteros can run two flavors of wheels, quarter ton and half ton truck wheels with the latter being the majority. So even a cheap wheel designed to carry a half ton truck or even a quarter ton (Montero, Tacoma, Xterra etc) are going to be up to the task.
We also need to consider maintenance and care, wheels torqued to spec and doing your own inspections after 4 wheeling. This goes with ANY wheels, even the baddest ass racing wheels should be inspected after you've demanded they do work. My last set of wheels were forged aluminum and i was worried my new cheapie guy wheels would crack so I've watched them meticulously and even torque striped the WMS. I've run the Rubicon fully loaded, done 75mph off-road and so far so good (3 years on these now).
Most people on this forum or most people for that matter are going to carry a RTT and take an Instagram pic on a forest road and that's not much work for even a quarter ton truck wheel. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe I'm dancing on death's door. Who knows, this IS the internet and i HAVE spread misinformation before ?.
One thing that i find curious is that NONE of the guys running these $700 a piece racing wheels actually go 4 wheeling (or racing) so how will we know if they're actually worth it? *Jab*
...Kidding, that money on forged wheels means your wheel doesn't break when you drive on them without a tire. I know for a fact that cheap wheels don't take that kind of abuse and i would NEVER race on these things but for overlanding and mild rock crawling they've held up fine.
why the change in wheels?
