You’ve probably seen the Enkei RPF1 propping up nearly every popular JDM sports car by now. It’s easily been one of the nicest looking, albeit commonly used wheels for the past decade. But one thing that makes today’s setup rare is that it’s on a Prius, where many owners tend to upgrade using 3-piece wheels with a nice dish. It’s that “VIP” look that many people try to shoot for. But every now and then, I come across a clash of ideals — a rolling contradiction of sorts.
And so, here we’ve got Albert’s Prius yet again; the econo-car of the century. It can do about 60 miles per gallon. But it’s got light-weight wheels befitting a car made for time attack.
My first step was to wrap the lips of these brand new wheels for some added protection. Lately, I’ve also been using masking tape, but on this project it was plastic wrap. Eventually, you’re gonna ding your wheels or hit small pebbles or stones on the highway. But it’s like having a new pair of shoes… they’ll get dirty. But you’ll still try to keep them clean and baby them for the first few weeks at least.
Next, it was time to transfer the TPMS sensors from the stock wheels onto the RPF1s. Ideally, you’d want to leave your sensors in your stock wheels and buy new ones for your new wheels. Then you’d clone the IDs to the new sensors. That way, you can swap wheels between your two sets without getting any TPMS errors on your dashboard. It saves a lot of time in the long run, and the less times you move your sensors around, the less chances that they might accidentally get banged up or broken in the process. (Less room for error).
Coincidentally, I’ve got TPMS sensors in stock and ready to be installed 😉
After the tires were mounted, it was time to put these bad-boys back onto the car. The left photo is before airing-out the suspension, and the right side is how it looks completely aired-out. I heard Albert got a lot of gripe for the setup, but personally I like it a lot. Now, time to slap a turbocharger on that thing and show these fools what eco-time-attack is all about!
