New wheels and rust patching

Getting a new set of wheels so that the car can be my daily. Patching up the wheel well rust for damage control.

Why start with wheels?

Ever since getting the car in December 2025, my biggest concern was the tires. The rears were in okay shape but the fronts looked like someone has been cutting the rubber with a chisel. This raised my suspicion of tire rub, especially since the original wheels on the del sols are 14in and the previous owner had 17s installed. No doubt, they look good but the tires would not last long. At this point, the car is already not safe to drive so getting new tires and downsizing to a smaller rim seemed like the most appropriate choice to me.

How I picked the new set?

I am a sucker of an old school 5 spoke rim. I do not know what pulls me to them but they have an undeniable character that I cannot resist. My plan is to paint the car dark plum purple at a later time (similar to Porsche’s Midnight purple) and I just do not want to have black rims. Gold is a bit too loud for my taste so bronze was the colour I settled on.

Now with the most exciting part done, time to get to the nitty gritty. The size, width and offset. For this stage I found the gallery of Fitment Industries to be most helpful (Del Sol Gallery). There are lots of example of different wheel fitments and a 15x6.5 +35mm rim looked the best in my opinion. It did help that one of the cars in the gallery has a very similar set. One other things I have done is to compare the size of the new set of tires to the old one to make sure I am saving space. This calculation confirmed that I would be adding extra 4cm of clearance.

The largest rust spot on the car

The most concerning exterior damage was the rust spot right above the wheelwell on the passenger side rear corner. Looked like this issue has been persisting for a while as the top metal layer was completely gone. The proper way to fix something like this is to weld. Unfortunately, I neither have the skills, equipment or space to weld. Which is why some bondo patch work will have to do until I am able to come back and fix it permanantly. The result is definitely not perfect but it is good enough for the rust to spread much slower.

Time: ~20 mins for wheel installation. ~3 hours for rust patching.

What’s next

The next step will be to replace the front left lower control arm as the subframe bushing is completely torn. Then get the axles and rear trailing arm bushings in order.

The car doesn’t need to be perfect. It needs to be right.