'88 80 wheels

["'*Tess*' Teresa A McMillan" <tessmc@u.washington.edu>]

Well, we got the 80Q up on jackstands this weekend in preparation for my
FIRST TRACK EVENT!! (a novice school sponsored by the local Bimmer club.)
After removing the wheels in preparation for checking/bleeding brakes, we
noticed that my front and rear wheels are not the same.  (I am the second
owner of the car.  I bought it through an Audi dealer when it was a couple
of years old; the car had come up to the NW from California in an
'Acura-swap'.)  My rear wheels have carved out tines on the inside, and
the casting around the holes for the lugnuts is indented.  My front wheels
are like my boyfriend's '84 4000Q:  the tines are not carved out on the
inside and the castings are flat where the holes for the lugnuts are.

My (probably esoteric and anal retentive) question is this:  anyone
know of any difference between the wheels?  Are my rear wheels lighter?
Any problems you know of in association with running the two kinds of
wheels?  The BF runs 2 completely different sized wheels on his P-car, but
you know... not 4WD... so I'm curious...

And in case anyone is interested:  I ordered a nomex-lined Snell '95 rated
full face helmet through Speedware (Redmond, WA):  the Bell Model M2.
This after MANY MANY informative posts on the helmet thread from the
Alfa-digest.  For the track event, only DOT helmets are required, but I
opted for the greater safety features of a '95SA helmet.  Unfortunately,
my helmet still hasn't arrived, so I may end up borrowing the BF's Shoei
('90M) helmet.  But at least it's the same color as my car.  Anyway, after
trying *on* the helmets, I would recommend Bell for their sizing.  Some of
the helmet makers fabricate only one helmet shell and use different layers
of foam liner to create a spectrum of sizes.  The Bell helmets are made
with different sized shells and different liners, which makes better sense
to me.

Tess

'88 80Q
'87 Alfa Spider Grad.