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Center Caps – A Stylish Finishing Touch For Your Auto
November 29, 2009
Wheel Center Caps – A Smart Finishing Touch For Your Car
Car producers have a lot of branding choices when it comes to making cars seem like they’re part of a unique manufacturing line; the car’s logo or the company’s logo appears on a lot of places. One of those is on the centre of the wheel. This is referred to as a wheel centre cap, and lamentably, they tend to be a minor casualty of the numerous knocks and scratches that cars get into as a regular course of operation.
When a car is lacking a center wheel cap it can look a little funny, as it ruins the consistent look of matching wheels and exposes the lugnuts; it can as well cause a car to look slightly unfinished. If this has happened to you you’re in luck, as there are now places where you can go to acquire replacement center caps. Your choices run from rim centre caps with stock finishes to customised caps. The little particulars make all the difference when it comes to how you car looks, and a good way to add to the value of you car – if you’re trying to sell it – is to exchange beat-up or worn caps with new ones.
Some souls will do some delving and find that several different sizes of wheels have common cap mounting points. It may be ridiculous to place BBS center caps on the rims of a GEO, but it’s perfectly possible. Most mass-produced wheel caps are constructed from chrome moly alloy, but you are not limited to only chrome as some are created from extruded aluminum or stamped stainless steel.
Beyond purchasing factory substitutes, there are companies that will sell custom wheel caps – these can be ornamental in a lot of ways. Some use authorized logos (like the logo of a favorite sports franchise or college campus), others are more artistic, covering religious or musical themes. Others can be personalized; it’s feasible to get a center cap done up (normally in ABS plastic) with about any kind of art you want, say your initials, or a message you believe in. (We’ve seen SUVs sporting “Holding back glaciers” on theirs…)
Keep in mind, though, that if you’re purchasing a custom set of wheel center caps, you’ll want to know the diameter of your wheels, in addition to how the caps attach. Since there’s a great deal of info available on-line about this, it shouldn’t be too much problem. Simply look up the model of your car, obtain the size of your tires, and determine if they’re a four, five or six nut fastening system, or if instead they’re an applique or screw on wheel centre cap system.
Wheel centre caps aren’t merely ornamental, they’re also necessary to the safety of your car. They shield the nuts that hold your wheel on the car from rusting. It’s also a lot simpler to remove a tire this way, since prying off rusted lugnuts in the rain if you have to change a flat isn’t the most pleasant thing in the world, so that’s another essential function of wheel center caps.
