Project Recap for Aero Wheel Covers

Hello,

I made a post about a week ago on my CNC'd aero wheel covers. I have to admit, that post was low quality and didn't go into my workflow for the project. Today I'd like to amend that.

I started out with 14" pizza pans as my V1 aero covers. The V1 covers served their purpose but they were not as high quality as I would've like. The pans eventually rusted, the mounting bolts would shimmy themselves loose because the covers weren't centered, and I couldn't get to the valve stem to pump my tires up.


So I drafted V2 aero cover with counter sunk screw holes, a center hole for alignment and a hole for valve stem access.


I had them cut with a CNC router out of HDPE using SendCutSend.


I had the aero covers, now I needed a way to center them on the wheel. I came up with this part.



I call it the center jig/part. The center hole has an embedded locknut that takes an M5 bolt. The part is press-fit into the center of the car's rims here:



Once the centering part was pressed into the rim, I mounted the aero cover itself to the rim with just the center bolt and marked out roughly where I would need to drill holes for the outer mounting bolts. They would come out to be roughly here at the end of every spoke:



Once the holes were drilled I could mount the aero covers with all the screws. I also printed a small cover for the valve stem access hole. The end result was this:



Close up



Lessons learned going from V1 covers to V2:
1. Anything that can rust will rust (at least in my area). So with my V2 covers I used all stainless hardware and the covers themselves are made from plastic instead of steel.
2. Road vibrations will rattle bolts loose. I used a generous amount of loctite on every bolt along with locknuts. I have not had a loose bolt yet.
3. Centering is important. I printed the centering part for the V2 covers and it does it job while making the covers look that much better.
4. Add a hole for the valve stem. I thought I'd be ok with prying the V1 aero covers off every time I needed to pump my tires up, but that became tedious and I stopped doing it. I ended up missing out on MPGs due to deflated tires. A small hole goes a long way.