so whydja go through all the trouble to have the bumpers painted, if you werent gonna paint them the same color as your car?

 

I know all about that 'flush' community. My last few cars have been 240s.

I picked a color that was close as the car looks like its been repainted and its fadded. The color doesnt match but for the moment it doest really bother me much.

Ive been thinking about taking it to a track and playin with the drift kids. However finding tires of a decent size at an affordable price for the 'vette rims isnt so fun. I decided to switch to 17" wheels. I found a set of Camaro SS wheels (17x9) for $140. With tires. 245/45-17 and 275/40-17. Same overall height as the 'vette wheel/tire combo. They need some paint as its flaking off but they fit and getting good tires is now a walk in the park as I can run the same tires on both of my cars.

 

I knew the late 90s 17"X9" Camaro SS wheels would fit at the rear after opening up the centers but my measurments showed that this wheel style would severely interfere up front on the inside. Most folks running even an 8" wide "revolver" 17" XKE wheel with a 33mm offset have to use a 1/4" spacer to prevent rubbing on the inside. Your wheel protrudes inward over an INCH more (29.7mm) than a 17"X8" XKE revolver wheel (additional 12.7mm due to 9" width as opposed to XKE wheel's 8" width, additional 17mm due to increased offset of 50mm for the Camaro SS wheel as compared to an XKE's offset of 33mm).

How in the heck are you using 9" wide extremely high-offset wheels up front that protrude inwards over 1.25" past the point that most folks experience interference on the inner side? It doesn't look like they've been spaced outwards that I can tell...

If you can't tell, I have obsessed over wheel clearances for a while and finally myself just pulled the trigger on some 17"X9" wheels (XXR 962s), but I sent the two for the front to be narrowed to 8" so that the width and offset would work for the front. I should have them back in about a month.

 

spyhunter2k

Im running1.5" bolt on spacers. All the way around. Only way to fit ANYTHING on this car.

I also have a set of 1.25" adapter spacers. They have a bolt pattern of 5x114.3 (5x4.5) so I can use even more wheels. =)

 

Ah. I remember that you used them with the 16" wheels—didn't realize that you had carried them over to the 17" wheels.

Your 9" rear wheel starts with a 50mm offset, from which 1.5" (38.1mm) is subtracted because of the spacer, which gives a final offset of 11.9mm on your rear wheels. Compared with a 9" wheel's ideal offset of 37.7-42.7 mm (according to my calculations, which I admit could be off), it looks like your wheels are about 1" further out than the limit at which they won't impact the fender lip on upward travel. I'm thinking that you're gonna need to roll those fenders and also do some slight pulling if you don't want to worry about interference on the outer tire edge.

Of course, my numbers could be off, and those wheels do look great. Before I bought mine, I really wanted to get a set of 17 X 9.5 and 17 X 8.5 ZR-1 wheels, but it turns out that the front 8.5s are pretty much discontinued. The c4 ZR-1 wheels are the exact look of the Camaro SS wheels.

 

I got to give you credit, most people done bother to do the math to get the offset right. you got the size of the spacer right.

1" = 25.4mm
1.5" = 38.1mm


however you might have gotten a bit confused with the new widths. so lets run the numbers!

16" wheel specs front 8.5 +32mm rear 9.5 +38
after spacer of 38mm 8.5 -6mm rear 9.5 +0

so thats how the car sat with the vette wheels. Remember that the tires also 'bubbled' out a bit from the rim so theres still a bit of room left offsetwise if different tires are fitted.

17" wheel specs front/rear 9 +50mm
after spacer of 38mm +12mm

take in the new width of 9 inches all around vs 8.5 front and 9.5 rear. Its only going to affect offset by a quarter inch, on each side of the wheel, so roughly 6mm. Thats going to be 6mm closer to the fender for the same offset for the front and 6mm further from the fender for the rear

wheels will sit front 12mm further inside of the fender.
rear 18mm further inside of the fender.
which is how the car sits. The new wheels sit further inside the fenders.

At the end of the day it needs spacers. lol.

 

Right—I realize that the difference was small when compared to the values on the 16" wheels when you were using the 1.5" spacers, but the 16" wheels themselves could have worked with being spaced only 1/2" outwards. Don't get me wrong—I think they look cool as heck with the 1.5" spacers, but they don't need all 1.5" to clear the suspension components on the inside.

I think you said in one of your posts that the initial 3/8" spacer you had wasn't enough on the front, and that a 15mm (little more than 1/2"), or was it 12mm...?, spacer would be ideal at the front to ensure clearance on the inside. So while true that your current setup with the 17s is only slightly different than your setup with the 16s, the 16s were about an inch further outwards than they had to be for inner-side clearance. Please don't take this observation as criticism—just me working through the math.

The problem comes with trying to space wheels outward by only 15mm—it's too far out for the wheel to still rest on the hub, but not wide enough to use the safer adapter-style spacers since the XJ-S lug studs would protrude further than 15mm and need to be cut off. If you don't want to take a Dremel to your lug studs, you have to get adapter-style spacers at least as long as our lugs, which I think are about 1.25". Your 1.5" spacers do the trick, but at the expense, again in my humble opinion, of spacing the wheels a bit further out than what is ideal. You may not have any problems, or you may find that you want to pull the fenders outwards a bit, especially with your car being lowered.

At any rate, I look forward to your progress. It's exciting to see those willing to take the plunge on doing something different, and I'm sure I'll learn from your posts.

 

Using smaller spacers would have been more then ok however I wanted the aggressive stance/fitment.

I've rolled and pulled the fenders. Alot.

 

wheels and tires are a "to each his own idea"

i had Corvette wheels on my car back in 1995,17s, and people would laugh and thought i had a vette engine and trans, and some how they just did not look right, with spacers had them made in building next door to my shop, CNC.

i came across these ENKEIs 9/18s frt, and 10/18s rear, with spacers.

and finally got the look i wanted!

 

hey that looks nice i love the lowered look. just wondering bout the front what is the height from the the centre cap of wheel and the edge of the fender?

 

i was planning a T-5 for my blown 3800 build, but then found out that theyre only rated to handle small V6's. any issues with yours so far?