So you just woke up, got a coffee and started your daily drive to work like every other morning. Only this morning you don't happen to see that pothole the size of a football field and smoke it going 90. Well chances are you bent your rim and are going to need a new wheel. You drop by the local wheel shop you bought them at last year and they tell you that they can't order them anymore since they are discontinued or backordered.

So you start your search on the internet since you don't plan on converting your car to a 3 wheeler any time soon and find a site like this to help you out. There is hope you don't have to rock that dummy time forever! Here are a few tips that will help you along your journey of finding that golden wheel. First thing I would do is call the manufacturer direct if you can find a number for them and ask if they might know who ordered a big shipment of that style of wheel last year. They may be like oh well wheelmax.com ordered 90 sets in spring they might still have a few.

Your next choice is to start calling around dealers of that brand and ask them if they have any old display wheels on their rack they might part with. Most dealers get display wheels for dirt cheap so if they have the wheel you need on the rack they won't mind pocketing the 150 bucks profit for a wheel that would otherwise just be sitting there.

At the old wheel shop I worked at we used to send wheel racks full of discontinued alloy wheels off to get melted for scrap since it was not worth our time to find people who wanted them online. Another great place to look is on eBay since there may be someone that wrote off their car yet they still have one good wheel and they list it. I know your thinking well an eBay listing is only 10 days max so I don't want to be checking everyday for a needle in a hay stack. EBay has a cool feature called saved searches and will show you how to use it. Favorite Searches lets you quickly find new items that you really want. You can even have eBay email you when new items matching your favorite search appear.

Step 2: Type in the Wheel name and click Search then wait for the results and click (Save This Search)

Step 3: Enter price just below what you think a set might cost so it emails singles only.

Now you are done and eBay will email you every time they get a match for a auction with the discontinued wheel you need. You can also get creative like adding a few more saved searches like sokudo 8 integra, sokudo 8 single, sokudo 4×100. This is a great feature offered by eBay and is great for finding almost anything rare and hard to find. Now letÿ⿿?⿿?s double your odds since most web forums archive posts forever most results for people selling single wheels will be 2 years old and you need to be on top of that deal. Google offers a really cool tool called google alerts that can email you new fresh search results as they are crawled. Put in the names of your wheels and select how often they want Google to email you. You can add a few more keywords to target your alerts a bit better like for sale, selling, discontinued used etc.

Ok so you got your eBay search setup and Google alerts. Is there anything thing else you can do? One last thing I'd recommend is eBay its new service they just added called want it now. Want It Now lets buyers post requests for hard-to-find items and allows sellers to respond to those requests with eBay listings. So you may just have someone do you a favor and find you. If we have your wheel listed on wheeldb.com we may also have similar wheels listed that look exactly the same or better yet are the exact same just a rebrand. Ever wonder why some wheel companies seem to have all the same wheels just maybe in a different color? It's because a lot of the time they are both ordering from the same wheel manufacturer in china, Japan, Philippines etc. If the wheel is made in another color still buy it and maybe use it as a chance to make the wheels a custom color. There is pretty much a place in every town that can refinish wheels or powder coat them.Good LuckIf anyone else has some tips to share add them to the comments.

• Previous Entry: PIAA Wheels Added
• Next Entry: Tips on Buying Wheels