Pleasant surprise - Protege wheel weight

I bought my 2000 Protege ES used in June 2007. It had the factory 15" alloys and BFGoodrich g-Force Sport in the stock 195/55-15 size. I've been really impressed with the tires. Two of them are nearing the wear bars, so I've been thinking about new wheels and tires. I've decided to stay with 15-inchers instead of going with a plus-1 or -2 upgrade. I want to keep things pretty light and reduce unsprung weight if possible. I don't push the car hard enough on public roads to need/justify the increased grip a wider tire would get me. I have plenty of fun with the 195s.

I've been looking at wheels on the Tire Rack's website. One great thing Tire Rack does is show you the weights of most of their wheels and tires. It occurred to me that I didn't know how much my factory wheels weighed, though I assumed they were on the heavy side. I was thinking 17-18lbs apiece. I have snows on the car currently, so I took the bathroom scale outside to weigh one of the wheels and tires.

According to the Tire Rack's website, my tires weigh 20lbs each. Weigh the combo, subtract the tire weight, and you have the weight of the wheel, right?

I'm a bit blown away - my wheels only weigh 14lbs. Nearly all the wheels I like and would consider buying are 2-4lbs heavier than my factory wheels. Forget that. (I weighed it three times, once with me holding it, to make sure I wasn't imagining things.)

So, guess who doesn't have to spend $400-ish on new wheels? (Leaves more money to build a shop later this year...)

Haha!! That's awesome! Always good to see another Protege driver too!

Mazda factory wheels are notoriously very light. Millennia wheels are somewhere around 11lb. in a 15x6. Some Miata wheels are under 10.

I can't visualize those wheels. Can you post a photo of them?

Konig has some nice light wheels for street use. I've had Heliums (15x7 = 11.8lbs) on my s/r for the last 7 summers and they've held up very well. The plastic center caps look like E36 M3 but the rims themselves are fine. Discount tire direct sells them, but I bought mine from Tire Trends in Canada (eh?).

In reply to Woody:

Here's my car with the factory alloys:

Oh... those! I wonder how those would look on the Deathscort.

I'm an ex Protege driver (91 lx to be exact). Does that qualify?

Whats the pattern on those?

In reply to mtn:

4x100, with I think a 35mm offset and 56.1mm center hole.

Hmmmm, maybe Mazda has let me down. My wife's 5 has the optional 17"s on it. They are NOT LIGHT. I took them off a couple months ago to switch to the snows. The General Altimax snow's on steels were lighter than the Toyo no-seasons on alloys. Didn't weigh them, don't really care. Just thought it was interesting.

I was changing tires in the shop the other day and was astounded on how light the wheels were on my expedition. As in I can hold them with one hand and strait am them light and these are 17 inch aluminum wheels. I am betting that they could not be more than 20 lbs each and probably less.

This really surprised me. I changed the wheels on a toyota truck that had 15inch alu alloys as well that same day and they were were much heavier. The only thing I can think of is cast versus forged? I am actually betting that the rims on my 924s are heavier than the ones on the Expedition.

I bet there are other really good stock rims out there hat people just dont know about.