Silver and black. Those are the only 2 colors I’ve had for my wheels and they’re both Apex Arc-8 wheels. I don’t know why, but I can’t really convince myself to get any other color. I’ve always liked gold wheels and that’s a 3rd option that I really considered, but I felt like I was stepping into the STI fan boy territory. Over the course of 5 years of ownership, I went through 2 sets of wheels with 4 different color changes.
I originally wanted this blog post to be just a simple photo gallery of my old Hyper Silver setup, but mid-writing I was reminded about my constant back and forth of color choices. So as you take a look at my “Phase 3” setup in the gallery above, here’s a little story of my Apex Arc-8 Wheel setups.
Phase 1
My first set of wheels for the E46 M3 were Apex Arc-8 in 18×9.5″ +22 in a squared setup with 265/38/18 tires. The color I chose was Hyper Silver. I ran about -3 camber in the front and -1.8 in the rear. Yeah, they were pretty aggressive considering I daily drove with that setup.
Phase 2
I liked the look a lot, but after a few months I wanted to switch it up. I resprayed my wheels to semi-gloss black with Plastidip! Yeah I went there. Although the white on black is a super common “Panda” themed look, I liked it a lot. But then I would cruise around the city and realize how many damn Panda’s there are. I quickly got tired of black.
Phase 3
It was only a few months after I sprayed my wheels that I decided I’d go to the local Home Depot and get a crap ton of Goo Gone to strip the Plastidip. If I had known how much of a pain in the ass it would be to strip the paint, I would’ve never dipped. I lost 5 hours of my time and a fingerprint on each thumb after the removing process was over. It was back to Hyper Silver.
Phase 4
After a few months I decided I didn’t like running -3 camber so I decided to get the same Apex Arc-8 wheels, but this time in a different size and different color. I thought really hard about what color to get and finally I chose the 18×9.5″ +35, in black.
Phase 5
I don’t know what I want now, but I really want to try a different color and possibly a different wheel style entirely. If you have any suggestions, comment below and maybe even post a picture of your ride.