Are these real Fuchs?

[Head416]

PO told me these were 16x9 Fuchs. I never questioned it. Then one day I had the wheel off and noticed the texture on the backside had a "sand-like" quality to it. Ever since then I've assumed they were fakes and didn't give it much thought.

Exhibit A:


But today I was taking some pics of the "markings" on the back and noticed 1) what looked like a 911 part number, and 2) a little fox head. Could these be real after all?







So what's the verdict? The outside area looks cast, but the center has what looks to be Fuchs markings.

[sc_rufctr]

The outside may have "corroded" causing them to look like this.

The markings look real.

[Geronimo '74]

The real deal.

[twistoffat]

Yep they are real. I posted this a while back.

Fuchs means fox in German. There is a little caricature of a fox's head stamped on the backs of all early Fuchs. Some earlies have it on the hub. But, most are adjacent to the "901..." part number. The fox heads on the hub are much larger than the ones appearing next to the "901..." number.

There is also a date stamp on the back of the hub. It will have the month and year. For example: "1 67" - January 1967. There are also other various esoteric forging numbers, letters, characters, etc. that the manufacturer used. These differ widely even among same size & date wheels.

Many early 4.5's have no "part" numbers stamped on them. These "part numbers" were originally forging numbers used by the Fuch company and not "part" numbers. (Otto Fuchs Metallwerke, commonly referred to as "Fuchs," is the company that made the wheels for Porsche; there are many, many other kinds of "Fuch" wheels - you just wouldn't ever recognize them...) The forging numbers were commonly ground off after forging. Later, these forging numbers became part numbers...

It gets a little more confusing... Some early 6's have the .04 number - again, the numbers were used for forging purposes and i'm sure are right for however they kept track of them, or maybe a few workers were just lazy in changing the serial numbers... Again, they couldn't have been that important if they ground most of them off! I even have a set of 6's with "901...00" part numbers! Also, Fuchs first appeared in late '66. There were 5.5's, 6's, and 7R's in '66! There had to be. All Porsche's racers were using these cutting-edge wheels. Different wheels for different applications...

7.0's had a rubber stamp part number - the metal stamp was almost always (basically read "always") ground off. Also, the metal stamp would not be .05, it would be whatever number was being used to make the 6's at the time, since they used the same forging piece for the petals or spokes. However, the sides and backs are unique and very recognizeable to the R wheels. Thus, custom-made R wheels are easily identifiable. Some 6.0's even end with .00 (very early). {I have (4) of these wheels.} It's possible to have R's with .00 forging numbers too. 6.0 Fuchs made for the 911R race cars had a .03 ending part number. Now, those are some extremely rare wheels: {24 cars (4 prototypes and 20 production cars) x 2 wheels(fronts) = 46 + 23 spares = 59 total !!! Ever!!!}

Incidentally, in "901...04" the "0" refers to the center cap style (3-prong). The "4" eventually, referred to the wheel size... Is there an "901...02" ? Could be. Maybe a .02 modification was done and Porsche said, "Uh-uh. That doesn't work," and trashed the whole .02 series. There are other gaps in Porsche part number series and oftentimes this is the case...

There are no fake 4.5's - yet. Also, they would be easy to identify because of their weight and especially all the little details that would surely be lost in the casting process. All original Fuch alloys were forged wheels. This process is very expensive, but extremely effective in producing a strong wheel. The back of 4.5's are also unique...yet similar to R's.

In the May 2000 issue of Excellence on p.108 Jerry Sloniger states, "If we give the standard wheel a cost baseline of 1.0, Fuchs estimates that the hollow-spoke aluminum wheel has an index figure of 13.0, a mag wheel 16.0." That means quality wheels are 13 to 16 times as expensive to produce! As you know, most automakers will dive head first at the opportunity to cut costs and put out junk instead of quality - (my opinion.)

Fuchs' contract gave all the tooling to Porsche. Sadly, Porsche no longer has the tooling for the early 15" Fuchs. They still have the tooling for the 16" and did a run of 500 wheels some years ago.

[Head416]

Thanks for the feedback... this bodes well for my asking price.

What about the texture seen in the first picture? Is that normal/common? My fronts (7x16) seem to have a hint of that look, but definitely not the same.

[Geronimo '74]

Brakedust, years of corrosion, not cleaning will do that to a wheel.
I wonder if the anodising layer is still under there.

here are mine,

[Head416]

That's the back of your wheel???

You make me sick!

[wildcat077]

Hey Geronimo,

You probably have that wheel on display in your wall unit ... lol
It`s way too nice

Phil

[Geronimo '74]

Thanks for the compliments and no, they're mounted on my car.
I guess you guys didn't see my post from when I just got them back from the wheeldude.

Enjoy!
My fuchs, finally...