We’ve been researching this for a couple weeks now and before accepting the job I wanted to make absolutely sure that we could engineer a 100% oem compatible wheel without any possibility of damaging the car or causing any safety issues.
We’ve had multiple inquires from Veyron owners but none of them were the right type of customer for something like this due to the insanely strict control Bugatti has on any modifications done to these cars. it’s impressive how much precaution they take to avoid liability and any safety risk, I can fully understand their position though. If someone unqualified were to change a tire on this thing and then the owner tries to break the sound barrier and a wheel falls off imagine the liability they might have to deal with if someone gets hurt. We’re the same way with our wheels, we don’t allow anyone to disassemble them and / or refinish them for the same reason, if they’re not rebuilt properly someone can get hurt and we’re potentially responsible.
Because of this we always design the wheels in a way that makes it almost impossible to balance and seal without the proper equipment, this way when a wheel is taken apart we usually get a call from someone claiming it’s leaking or vibrating. our wheels don’t leak or vibrate so it’s an automatic warranty void and we request to get them back so we can rebuild them properly.
These wheels and tires are obviously a million times more controlled by Bugatti which is totally understandable. The wheels are designed in a specific size which will only accept these exact tires. The tires can only be purchased from Bugatti and the wheels cannot be dismounted without a special type of equipment that can only be found apparently in 3 locations throughout the world! This means, if you get a flat or have some worn tires, the car goes to the dealer, wheels removed, spares installed by the dealer and the wheels / tires are shipped to 1 of 3 service centers for servicing. No way around it.
Then there’s the tpms issue. Bugatti made a specific sensor for the wheels which is tied to the vin obviously and will report any alarms directly to bugatti, meaning they know if your tire is low and if you replace the wheels they know about it because your sensors will no longer work since there’s no possible way to remove them or purchase them…Besides all that, even if you don’t care the car will still annoy you with beeps of death if you drive without the sensors working properly or missing.
oh, then the tires. I wouldn’t even want to think about using a size that doesn’t exactly match the oem OD’s so the available choices are pretty limited. Since everyone assured me that it couldn’t be done I had to take some time to research this for myself – sure enough, you can – there is an existing exact oem OD match available within 1mm front and rear – so the myth of the secret veyron tires is BS. Still I’m hesitant to do anything to the car without full consent by the owner and fully researching the issues to make sure everything will be ok. The car can never go 253mph without the oem tires, but who would anyways? The owner who would be willing to change the wheels on this car has to understand that and be willing to possibly void warranty.
Can it be done? I wouldn’t take the order otherwise and I did plenty of research to make sure it would be possible. Yes it can be done, yes there are tires that match oem sizes with a 20×11 / 21×14 wheel setup instead of the oem sizes. The wheels themselves need to be strong enough for something like this which ours are fully capable of more than this type of power but I wouldn’t be willing to release these without testing first.
Are we doing them, so far it looks like we will be – I input the order today but we still need to resolve the tpms issue which I’m sure I’ll find away to get around. The wheels will accept the oem sensors but getting them is the issue.
we’ll see what happens! fingers crossed, hopefully we’ll make it happen – the owner is very aware of all of the issues and is willing to do whatever it takes to get this done it seems so we’re really excited to have the opportunity. It’s not too crazy actually, we’ve done some harder setups that aren’t as straight forward than this but all the bugatti control over these cars is what’s difficult which honestly I don’t blame them for a second and I wouldn’t touch this thing if I wasn’t confident that we’ll be able to do it without any risk.
