Rims done right..Jason at Earlywheel

Looked all over for a good deal on early style smoothys, new ..used options. want some simple old school look for my 29Av8..I stopped at earlywheel. the price is more then fair, their service and friendlyness on the phone is not that of the big boys, I never felt stupid...or like they were doing me a favor.. Jason and crew are good kats.. regular guys and fair on their prices *stockton, bolton and the "other" big boys sure are the players..and they know it and give you two choices..* I chose the second and found Earlywheel. I'll have them in a wheel.. and post a shot or two of their work..here's their website..and they are HAMB brothers and give a 10 off deal (to their already smoken fair prices) their lil guys..and we need to take care of guys like this, cause they do care about us and not just the cash end of it. if your looking..have another look at earlywheels..before you buy.. Thanks Jason..I have no problem giving a shout out for good folks..
http://www.earlywheel.com/contact.html

 

I bought a set of smoothies for my wifes chevy from them and I am pretty happy with them so far.

 

Delivery from Early Wheel took a little longer than expected but I now realize I was in a long line at the beginning of the summer and things were back ordered all over the place.
June and July are probably peak season for Jason and others in the wheel business.
Anyhow I had everything I needed in about 7 weeks.
Superb quality and fair pricing.
I've done business with Early Wheel when Pete owned it back in 80's and 90's and will continue to buy from them under Jason's leadership.

Very good company!

 

you dealt with pete at the old solvang local?
I ordered mine this morning.. I'll have them in a week, his problem is waiting on matrials I think and the price of steel with the fuel prices, I bet has alot to do as to when he buys product.. never the less, order today, may be able to pick up as I swing through the coast on saturday..if not they will ship out mid next week.. thats pretty damn good..
help the lil guys, they help us.

 

Jason did me a set of 16" smoothies - he goofed and made good. Very pleased with the end result and he is a great guy to deal with - straightforward and to the point. he adapted my N.O.S hubcaps to the smoothies and did not charge me an arm and a leg to do so - unlike other quotes I had. So thumbs up for Jason.

 

Good to hear I plan on ordering a set of smoothies from them right after the first of the year.

 

I just received my chrome smoothies today..... I was totally impressed ... great job.. I would deal with Jason again in a heart beat....

Roy

 

Do his wheels have the (inside) nubs? I've lost a few caps like that. Also are they the ones with the fits all holes in the wheels?

 

yes and yes.... no caps for me anyway.. and the extra holes.... well one cant have to many holes I think.....

 

Got mine early last week as promise.. More then happy.. Thanks jason.

 

can u order just hub caps from him or do you have to buy wheels in order to be able to buy hub caps??

 

I have been running a set of early wheels on my car for about 12 years now ! Great wheels,balanced up good,slim to no weights. Would buy again in a heart beat. Good people,good product !

 

They have many styles of caps and rings. No you don't have to buy wheels to order them. Ask to make sure they will fit your wheel style.

 

Jason gave me a great deal and even knocked off an extra 10% (HAMB).
Rims worked out great!

 

Nobody has any pics of their wheels? Hopefully ordering next week.

 

Been runnin' them on both of our "fun" cars for years. Will buy from them again.

 

Had my wheels on order with Early Wheel for over a year now. Too many details to even bother getting into but I'm still waiting. Tick tock tick tock....

 

I think it's time to move on...

 

They're also in cali and you could not resolve? Did you pay and not receive merchandise?

 

here are mine....15x41/2 front .... 15x10 21/2 inch back spacing on the rear..

 

Like I said, too many details and BS to get into. Apparently he's still working on them. And they're nothing special either... just a plain jane 16" deluxe wheel. He's doing what he can to accomodate me but a year for a set of steel wheels is a bit much.

I don't want my money back either. I just want my goddamn wheels that I paid for in full a year ago.

 

i got 4 from them . nice wheels & good help ............ steve

 

Good news. I ordered 4 custom backspace and was told 2 weeks till they can build them. They arrived 12 days later from Ca to Fl,wow.
Jason and Hylan are true to their word. I received exactly what I ordered in a timely manner.
Got 10% off for mentioning the HAMB,dont need a alliance membership.

EDIT**The wheels are WRONG...see below

 

...and I still don't have mine.

 

That's goofy. Others are getting wheels quickly and you are waiting, after paying, for a year. What is so special about yours or what are the circumstances. Maybe Jason should come on and explain. There are two sides to every story.

We ran into a similar issue with another wheel vendor that some people hold in high regards........delays, stories, shipping this week, etc. Finally called them on the carpet and they fessed up they couldn't make the wheels. The truth would have been better up front.

Don

 

Jason was great to deal with and the result was even better.

I have the caps, but I think it looks good with out them, I will put them on some day!

 

there caps and rings.

 

Built my wheels REVERSED instead of standard, Now the calipers wont clear.

 

that's basically what's happened to me now. but it's taken him a year of dickin' around to finally say it. but that's not even half the story.

first, i order a set of his "deluxe" wheels and tell him i need 5x5.5 bolt pattern which he says he has. this is back in sept 2010. i told him no rush because i was in no rush. finish was to be black powder coat.

i didn't think "no rush" meant take 3 months so i start calling him and he says oh yeah they're going out the door today (this is around thanksgiving now). i wait two weeks and nothing. i call him up and say where are my wheels and he says oh you didn't get them? nope i didn't get jack shit. he does his looking around and says well they must have been stolen from the ups center. hmmmm... no tracking numbers given to me no nothing. he says sorry for the delay i'll build you another set asap and you'll have them in two weeks.

a month goes by and nothing. i call him up and now he's having problems getting the centers to press into the hoops. okay well i can deal with that so i decide to wait it out. so to try and get the centers in the hoops he's now welding on the outside of the centers to increase their diameter so they'll press into the hoop. doesn't sound so great to me but i'm trusting him and say do whatever you gotta do. wait another month and still no wheels. call him up and he says they won't balance out now because of the added weight or something or maybe it was that they wouldn't true. i dunno, it's been so long i can't remember all the shit he's told me. actually, i think two were good but the other two weren't. never saw a pic of anything... i just continued to wait.

finally he says he has good centers that press into the hoops. sweet! he builds me a set of wheels, sends them out to powder coat and tells me they're ready to ship and that i'll have them the next day. cool! well two weeks go by and nothing. call him up and he tells me that he found out that he never had 5x5.5 centers that they're all 5x4.5 centers and that they must have been mis-marked from the supplier. um okay. then he blames his new guy in the shop for not checking the bolt pattern before building the wheels and sending them out to get coated.

his solution is to start calling around and looking for 5x5.5 centers. i say fine, do what you gotta do and i keep waiting. apparently he drives to multiple places and he either sucks at describing what a deluxe wheel center is or everyone he talked to was an idiot. apparently people said yeah sure i have those in 16" so he'd drive up there to get them and they weren't the deluxe centers. this goes on for a month or two and finally he says that he's thinking about re-drilling the 5x4.5 centers for 5x5.5. i'm not too hot on this but he convinces me that it's fine and that he knows someone that can get it done quick. and of course i say fine do whatever you need to do and i wait.

jason must like working with incompetent people because the guy he hired to redrill the centers never once did them right. the way jason makes it sound is that he must have given the guy a dozen or so centers and they always came out wrong. wtf?? finally i say well since this has taken so long can we maybe do something different on the finish and he says sure no problem. i say i want something that looks like raw magnesium and he says sure we can do that no problem. i ask for a color sample and he says sure thing. okay cool and i continue to wait.

don't hear anything for two or three weeks so i call again and ask him about the color sample. says he has a picture but it doesn't really show up right. i ask him to describe the color and he says well it's kinda yellow-ish. huh? what happened to raw magnesium? he says oh i thought you wanted that dow 7 color? i said no, i want raw mag and in fact he said he had already done a set of wheels like this and they looked exactly like raw mag. how did we go from grey raw mag to yellow? i'm starting to think that i'm getting yanked around here and being taken for a ride...

a couple more months go by and he finally gives up on that first idiot that couldn't machine the centers right and finds someone else. apparently this guy is a wiz and should knock 'em out in just a couple days and jason is going to rush my wheels through and get them to me asap. cool, i'm finally going to get my wheels. nope. it takes his guy like another 3 or 4 weeks to drill out the centers all the while jason is trying to figure out this mag color. i ask him for color samples multiple times and i never see anything... not even a photo.

i start calling daily and start talking to hylan because jason is out for a while. i start giving hylan shit and asking where the hell my wheels are and he says he's never seen them or heard of them and doesn't recall the second set ever getting made and doesn't know anything about a special mag powder coat color. a week or two later jason get's back and i ask about what hylan says and jason says ah nah i'm working on your wheels personally... he doesn't know anything. and i'm like okay, i'm pretty sure it's just the two of you guys and you've been working on my wheels for a year and the only other guy there doesn't even know about it? that doesn't seem likely to me. or why didn't you say hey there is this pissed off guy that's going to be calling everyday because i've taken a year to build him some steel wheels... here's the info you need to tell him.

anyways, a few weeks ago jason says that the centers are now drilled right and that the powder coaters have the right color although i never saw a sample like i asked him to send me multiple times. in fact i told him that i wanted to see the color first hand and to absolutely not powder coat the wheels until i saw a sample.

i call him up a couple weeks ago and he says okay nate your wheels are at the coaters getting coated now and i have pictures and they'll be shipping asap. wtf happend to DO NOT COAT THEM UNTIL I SEE THE COLOR??? ugh i say okay this powder coat color better be fucking perfect since you didn't give me the chance to okay it. i tell him please send me the pictures and i even email him a reminder. his response is that the file is too big to get off his phone or something and so i never see a pic of my supposedly finished wheels.

so another week goes by and nothing. i call him up and he says he's having a hard time getting the wheels from the coaters but will have them soon. so i wait a day or two and then call again. this time i get hylan again and i ask for jason... nope jason is out for the rest of the week. wtf??? i email jason demanding a status update asap and he writes back saying he'll get in touch with me asap. does he? of course not.

then this week i get an email saying that he doesn't know what to do now because the wheels are out of center. what??? are you fucking kidding me?!? why don't you check this shit BEFORE you send them to the coater??? then he proceeds to tell me that he's out $1300 in materials and time and blah blah blah all the while i've been waiting a fucking year for wheels that are practically fucking trailer wheels that he said he could make.

so here i am over a year later with no wheels and now my dumb ass is seriously thinking about redrilling my front hubs to 5x4.5 just so i can get some goddamn wheels so i don't have to leave my car sitting on jack stands.

at this point i'm wondering if jason has ever once actually built me a set of wheels or not. everyone i've told this story to has told me that i'm getting screwed and that i'll never see my wheels or get my money back. in fact, this has turned into a joke at my work which is where i wanted the wheels shipped to. i used to always ask the shipping guy if i had some wheels show up and he'd always say no. then finally he starts saying hey nate your wheels are here and i'd say really and he'd say haha no. even my boss is like you've waited a year for STEEL WHEELS??? and i say yeah i know i'm an idiot.

don't get me wrong jason certainly seems like a nice guy and he's pleasant on the phone but i'm so over this shit now. he's certainly made me believe that he done quite a bit to try and accommodate me but it shouldn't have taken this long. and like i said, the sad part now is that i'm thinking about redrilling my front hubs for 5x4.5 because i still really want these wheels. is there something wrong with me? would a normal person wait this long for stupid steel wheels??

well that's my side of the story. jason can tell his side if he wants but i doubt it would be much different than mine. i'm not pissed and i'm not going to start a 'screw jason at early wheel' thread but i am sorely disappointed now.

i think most guys would have bitched and complained long before i am and i've tried to be as patient as possible and hold me tongue because i believed that he'd get these wheels done for me like he said he could and would do.

 

Thanks Nate, I think I will reconsider who I order front wheels and parts for the rear lakester wheels from now.