135M Wheels, Shadow Chrome and Maldives Blue

M

Mangozac

Senior member
 QLD, Australia
Hi guys,

OK so my Zed has the 17" 103 style wheels and although I quite like that style, I was thinking it would be nice to go to 18" when I need to fit new tyres (which to be clear won't be for at least another year or so). Oh and also the current wheels are starting to get a bit tatty: the dealer I bought the car from did a really quick and cheap respray on them which is starting to flake off in spots.

Z4_1.jpg


I want to stay OEM, but at the same time I wouldn't mind going to a darker colour (to hide the brake dust!). I had a look and the only wheels that really grabbed my attention were the 135 style M wheels:

135Wheel.jpg


I found some on eBay and was wondering what a realistic price to pay would be. The description (and pictures) show very slight gutter rash around the rim, so I figure while getting them repaired I could get the repaint too?

So my questions are:
1. What would you expect to pay for used OEM wheels like that? I was thinking around the AU$1000 mark shipped considering it would then be a few hundred dollars more getting them repainted/repaired.
2. Has anybody got pictures of darker (graphite/gunmetal) colour OEM wheels on Maldives Blue?
3. Has anybody got pictures of the 135 Style on Maldives Blue?

Maybe I'm better waiting until I'm closer to the point of tyre changing before I worry about the wheels. Either that or just getting my current 103 wheels repainted (although I'm pretty sure 18" would look that much better than the 17s).

Thanks in advance!
 
I think the 135 M-wheels (shown) are the best looking Z4 wheels. But ... they are lots of work to keep clean, especially compared to the star-spoke (style 108 or 203) 18 inchers.

Pic in montego blue (from this forum):

IMG_3440Small.jpg


P.S. BMW Australia sell them for abut A$800 per wheel, if I remember correctly. In the USA, you could buy them new for about US$400 per wheel ... and then get them shipped over ... probably for a couple of hundred.
 
Thanks Krusty.

Yeah any wheel with close spokes like that is a pain to clean - I don't expect they could be much worse than the 103 style. I'm personally not a big fan of the 108 or 203 wheels. They look great on the Montego blue, so I'm sure would also look good on Maldives - I'll have to photoshop them onto a pic of my car in the darker colour.

If new ones are $800 each then I guess $250 each for used ones isn't too bad. I don't know much much it would cost to get them repaired/resprayed? Maybe $100 each?
 
I'm still agonising over this one, and have done some GIMPing (Photoshopping) to help sell myself the idea. It hasn't helped all that much. The problem is that I do really like the design of the 103 wheels; I just wish they were larger!

First up here's a pic with the 103s painted in a darker metallic grey:
z4_103s.jpg


Next I've got a pic of the Zed posted by Krusty above that I've changed the colour to something closer to Maldives Blue and again darkened the wheels (yeah bad job I know):
Z4_135s.jpg


I've been offered a set of good condition used 135 wheels with 70% tread left tyres for AU$1400 delivered which seems very good. They are Bridgestone Potenza Adrenalin RE001 tyres which are very decent quality. I did some ringing around and a repaint will cost about AU$130 per wheel (so $520 for all four), which seems a ludicrous amount to spend on the 103s to spruce them up (but more justifiable for the 135s, giving me very nice, individual wheels for under 2 grand). The rear tyres are 265mm wide - nice and fat so would look really good!

On the down side I still have heaps of tread left on my current tyres (pretty sure they were new when I bought the car), so it's a bit of a waste to upgrade already. :(

Any thoughts or comments?
 
Buy the new wheels and sell the old ones on eBay with the tyres which will offset against the cost of your new ones... :D
 
I found out (after purchasing) that mine had replica 135's which had more marks than I would like. So after a few weeks of obsessively researching alloy styles I bought myself some genuine......135's :D

I just couldn't find any other style that I prefered on the Zed! I paid £400 for mine which had had recent refurb and included tyres.

They're not that bad to clean. If you keep on top of it you only need to wipe between the spokes to bring back the shine rather than a full on scrub every time.

I've quickly realised that you can be prudent with money for the first 27 years of your life, only to go and fling vast amounts about on a whim when it comes to your Zed. I'd say if you've got an itch for the 135's - stump up the cash and scratch it! :thumbsup:

The other thing I did notice was that (in the UK at least) I've never researched a product and seen such a variation in price as I did looking at alloys. I saw £100's of difference in what people were paying for comparable items. So make sure you take a look at the market and set yourself a price you'd be happy with.

You can always sell your old tyres / alloys as a set or separately to recoup some of the cost. If they have a lot of tread that will hike up the value on your resale!
 
I'm a big fan of 135s (or MV2s as I call them).

Personally I think they'll look great on any colour of zed, and will be a big improvement on your existing 103s :thumbsup:
 
JDM said:
Buy the new wheels and sell the old ones on eBay with the tyres which will offset against the cost of your new ones... :D
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Yeah I did think of that too - I'm not sure how easily they would sell though? I can't see them suiting many cars other than Z4 personally...

Cov_Lee said:
I just couldn't find any other style that I prefered on the Zed! I paid £400 for mine which had had recent refurb and included tyres.
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Wow that's cheap! Unfortunately everything car related is so much more expensive over here :(

Cov_Lee said:
They're not that bad to clean. If you keep on top of it you only need to wipe between the spokes to bring back the shine rather than a full on scrub every time.
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Yeah like I said I can't imagine the cleaning to be much worse than the 103 style, which also has smallish gaps between the spoke pairs.

Cov_Lee said:
I've quickly realised that you can be prudent with money for the first 27 years of your life, only to go and fling vast amounts about on a whim when it comes to your Zed. I'd say if you've got an itch for the 135's - stump up the cash and scratch it! :thumbsup:
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Hahaha not too far off - I'm 27 in March! Certainly I'm very lucky to have a good job and be single with no attachments, so it's not a matter of being able to afford stuff for the car but simply exercising self control :P

Adamski said:
I'm a big fan of 135s (or MV2s as I call them).

Personally I think they'll look great on any colour of zed, and will be a big improvement on your existing 103s :thumbsup:
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Aha thanks for the tip on the name - googling MV2 comes up with a lot of hits also (135 is tough because googling "BMW 135 wheels" simply reports wheels for 1 series!) ;)

Thanks guys (or perhaps the seller should be thanking you since I'm pretty close to sold now!) :thumbsup:
 
Woohoo the new (to me) wheels arrived!

They are exactly as advertised: pretty good condition with a kerb mark around about 1/4 of the lip of one of them. My tyrefitter neighbour confirmed that the tyres are in good nick, with 70% tread left. Sounds like I got a good deal then! As I already knew, 3 of the 4 wheels are missing the small ///M stickers and all of the centre caps are in a pretty corroded state:

Wheelbadgecorroded.jpg


So I've asked for a price for a set of the new style centre caps from http://www.thebmwpartstore.com/ and ordered a set of ripoff ///M stickers for cheap off eBay (I wasn't going to pay $5.00 ea for OEM ones). Although they've still got weights on them I'll still get these wheels balanced and an alignment done once they're on the car.

The big question now is this: do I get the wheels refurbed now or later? The benefit to doing them now is that I still have my old wheels on the Zed so she wouldn't be out of action while the refurb is done. The kerbing although small would still annoy me if I don't get it fixed now - if that wasn't there I wouldn't be too worried.

A shadow chrome finish would be cool (see http://www.z4-forum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=27488&view=previous) but it's pricey to get done (all four wheels wouldn't get me much change from $900). Surely the shadow chrome would hide the brake dust much better also?

Any suggestions?
 
This little project got put on hold over the festive season, but I want to get it done before I go back to work. But I'm still agonising over the colour for the new wheels. Then yesterday I saw a white M3 rocking Style 260 wheels which are a darker colour. A bit of Googling and most people reckon that Space Grey is a very close colour to the Style 260 wheels. So I did some Photo Chopping ;)

Here's the original colour of the wheels:
135MMaldives0.jpg


And here's an approximation of what they would look like in Space Grey (actually I think this is a little lighter than it would actually be):
135MMaldivesSpaceGrey.jpg


I'm sure that it will hide the brake dust well, but I'm worried it might be a little too dark. I know I keep asking but does anybody have any opinions yet? Or a suggestion for a more appropriate colour?
 
I prefer the original colour to the Space Grey, thats just my opinion and down to individual choice, however perhaps the photo doesn't do the colour justice.
 
I prefer the original silver colour MV2s on your car. if you want to go darker then it's always a matter of personl choice. All of us who have modded and changed wheels and other trim on our cars like what we've done but there are always plenty on here who will tell you honestly they don't like the colour or style of what you've done. :)
It's your car do what you want to.
 
If you want to hide the brake dust why paint your wheels so they always look dirty? Leave silver and wash them regularly!
 
Wow talk about stiff opposition!

paddy wright said:
If you want to hide the brake dust why paint your wheels so they always look dirty? Leave silver and wash them regularly!
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That comment makes me wonder if you're an imposter - a real Z4 driver would know that the wheels become filthy with brake dust after 5 minutes of driving! :poke:
Seriously though, I don't have time to keep the whole car as clean as I'd like, thus why the concept of wheels that hide the brake dust better is appealing.

ZermattV said:
For Me Maldives needs silver wheels - smoked chrome/ gunmetal etc looks best with silver cars IMHO.
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The opinion of a fellow Club Maldives member is very important.

Yes it's true this does come down to a matter of personal choice, but I'm a big believer in personal choices being advised by informed people (i.e. I wouldn't solicit this advice from a Jap tuner car enthusiast). Plus if I were feeling more confident I wouldn't be asking for opinions!

You know what? I think I need to just put the new wheels on the car and see what they look like in person in the stock silver colour. I'll do that tomorrow and report back. It would certainly be a lot cheaper to get just the one wheel with the gutter rash refurbed rather than all four!
 
I have Grey wheels on my silver 4x4 during the winter and one thing to note is they make the alloy appear visually smaller :thumbsup:

looking forward to seeing the photos as i almost bought MV2s for mine when i moved on from 103s.
 
OK reporting back! I swapped the wheels over and took some pics, but looking at the car in person with the stock colour wheels I knew I wouldn't be happy paying to get them refurbed in the same colour. In reality I do need to get all four wheels repainted, as although only one has been kerbed, the rest all have little nicks and such. The bottom line is that I want to distinguish my Z4 from the others around that are being driven by old rich ladies! :roll:

Here's the 135 wheels stock colour:
Z4WheelsOriginal.jpg


I had another dig around BMW paint codes and came up with A08 Silver Gray. I found a pic of an X5 in this colour online, which then allowed to to colour match in GIMP so that I could see pretty much exactly what the colour will look like. The silver grey seems to have a brown tint to it. Here's how they look:

Z4135SilverGray.jpg


I certainly think that this colour, being lighter than the space grey, is more appropriate, however I'm still not sure if it's too dark. Will keep deliberating!
 
Lol I think the space grey is still too dark...

Does it matter if you use a BMW paint colour? Coz I think the oem colour looks good, and would only go the slightest shade darker, not space grey.

As for the brake pads, swap em with some EBC red stuff, and brake dust is an issue of the past :poke:
 
My thoughts (for what they're worth)...

The 135M wheels look fantastic in stock colour - but don't really look suit being painted. I've got 135s myself and have toyed with the idea - but whenever I photoshop them up I don't like them. I think it's because they're too intricate - black or anthracite alloys work best with more simple, single spoke style wheels.

A forum member painted his black earlier this year, there's a thread here (although some of the pictures seem to have vanished):
http://www.z4-forum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=26391
 
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