Hi, I wanted to replace my 18" wheels with 20" on my 2018 Jaguar E-Pace, but I have an element of the strut/spring (insulator?) sitting only <1" halfway above my 18" wheels:



It looks like this will touch/block 20" wheels, which I don't quite understand since the E-Pace comes with up to 21" stock wheels and some folks even add 22". Why does this "thing" sit so close to (and above) my wheels? Can it be moved/removed/pulled up to make room for 20" wheels?

 

The thing can not be removed!
When you go up in size of the rim you downsize the height of the tire.
I went from 235-65-18 to 265-50-19 and have the same diameter. The middle number tells the height of the tire.

 

Yeah I understand that the height of the tire goes down when sizing up the rim, but in my calculation (https://tiresize.com/calculator/) the total height still goes up. Numbers:

Current: 235-60-18 = diameter 29"
New: 255-50-20 = diameter 30"

This feels awfully close?

 

​​​​​​Are you sure you don't have 235-65-18 cause that's what I had?
​​​​​​235-65-18 to 255-50-20 would match perfectly.

 

Yeah I'm sure, but just tested it and turns out I have 3mm room. That's enough. But in the back the 255 tire now rubs against the plastic cover . Looks like no way around wheel spacers...

 

You'll be glad you bought spacers when you have them on your car, makes the car look more aggressiv and powerfull!
I love em!

 

A heat gun can bend/warp the plastic cover around the wheel in the back if you think bending it away would help. You will find many others doing this on other forums for many other makes/models.
As for wheel spacers, they can be pretty slim, you don't have to add 1/2 inch or anything that would be dramatic. Actually you can go up to about 1/2 inch and it is not that far off from stock. Few people could tell you even have a spacer at 1/2 inch. Generally you have to point it out.

 

Good idea with the heat gun, that would probably work, but I just test-mounted the new wheel, and turns out it's also sitting extremely close to the strut in the front (1-2mm gap on side):



So I went ahead and ordered 10mm wheel spacers and ET nuts. Any bigger than 10mm and I would need longer studs (or get spacers with studs and trim the old studs), which would complicate this even further. Hope the 10mm will do the trick with both plastic in the back and struts in the front.

 

Yeah, I did the whole 30mm hub centric spacer and had to have the factory studs cut down a bit. But it looks good and am happy I did it.

 

Didn't need to cut the studs cause my wheels have a hole for the studs to go into. 😊