Huge Wheels RUBBBB

[500dolla]

Hey guys im sorry to be posting this but i havn't found a good mazda site yet and this forum was so helpful to me with my G20, and i thought this would be common knowledge on cars.

SOI have 18" wheels on my Mazda 626 with 225/40tires , there is some rub against the strut guard or w/e that roundish plate is that holds the bottom of the spring. Would spacers do the trick or am i talking about a smaller strut( giving more width clearing)?

Honestly its not worth having rims these big, too expensive for tires. I bought the car with it and it has Z rated tires. Z rated with 130hp brilliant. I might sell the car with the rims and go for my original thought. A 240!!!!

[nissantech06]

Hey guys im sorry to be posting this but i havn't found a good mazda site yet and this forum was so helpful to me with my G20, and i thought this would be common knowledge on cars.

SOI have 18" wheels on my Mazda 626 with 225/40tires , there is some rub against the strut guard or w/e that roundish plate is that holds the bottom of the spring. Would spacers do the trick or am i talking about a smaller strut( giving more width clearing)?

Honestly its not worth having rims these big, too expensive for tires. I bought the car with it and it has Z rated tires. Z rated with 130hp brilliant. I might sell the car with the rims and go for my original thought. A 240!!!!

Spacers are dangerous...they change the handling of the car by putting the wheels out farther from the suspension. As far as Z rated tires...good luck in snow.

I'd go with 17" rims if you REALLY want bigger wheels.

[500dolla]

The spacers are in the back ONLY, im not ready to sacrifice my cv joint in the front for huge tires. I plan on putting 3/16th of an inch in for my spacer, and probally 2 so 3/8inch for each wheel. Cosmetically i think it will look meaner, but perfomance wise what am i doing to it in the rear (fwd car)???

[nametakennow]

The spacer will be fine. It's not enough of a difference to mess with your handling significantly. The rear tires aren't doing squat anyway. Spacing the grip a little further out can't hurt handling much if at all.

Furthermore, not all Z-rated tires are crap in the snow. It has nothing to do with the speed rating and everything to do with tread design and rubber compound.

Anyway, I'd ditch these wheels to begin with.

[gotak]

I put 16 steels on my car with winter tires and because no one seems to know what fits or have steels that fits it's now sticking out 7 mm more then before. Which I don't like... cause of the effects on the suspension. Someone I know with a 350Z says no problems cause his aftermarket alloys are 15mm more out then the stocks and he has no issues. I am just wondering if the Z has more robust parts...

[nametakennow]

Think about it. The wheels "sticking out more" doesn't mean squat. It doesn't pull on the hub, suspension, or anything else, it's just a different design of the wheel. If anything, it's stupid huge heavy wheels that would cause damage to the suspension, but simply having a different offset doesn't cause any damage at all.

If you look at the inside of your stock wheels you can see the size and offset. The bolt pattern is 4X114.3. Get whatever wheels you want that fit. Use an offset calculator (Google it, there's at least one online Java-based one) to determine how much further out and/or in it will be, then measure to see if you have that much room inside your wheel wells, and then use a tire size calculator (again, Google) to determine what size tires to run.

[jbarbaresi]

500dolla - i agree with nametakenow, a spacer will not harm your handling or your suspension with the size you are talking about putting on. a 3/8in spacer is fairly large, almost 10mm, you will probably be able to get away with a 5 or 7mm one so i would recommend trying those first. the reason your inner lip is hitting your strut housing is because the wheels you have don't have a good width and offset for your car. you have a couple different options to solve your problem you are having... a) get rid of the wheels you have now and find a set with a slightly lower offset, about 5 or 10mm lower than whatever you have on now or b) find a set of wheels that are about .5 in narrower with similar offset or c) add a small spacer to the wheels you have now which is essentially doing the same thing as option a only you get to keep the wheels, just be careful the spacer won't push the outside of the wheel out past the fender. once you know the offset and width of the wheels you have now, you can play around with the offset calculator below to see what will give you a couple more mm of clearance on the inside.

http://www.1010tires.com/WheelOffsetCalculator.asp

gotak- any time you plus size your wheels/tires, go with a wider wheel, or change offset it is going to push out the outside edge of the wheel, or bring in the inside edge of the wheel depending on which way you are going. as long as it doesn't push it out past the fender or bring it in against the strut housing you won't have an issue, with oem suspension even if the wheel goes out past the fender you probably won't have a rubbing issue it will just look gay. on wheels of the same width, a smaller offset will push the wheel out, but also give more clearance on the inside for the strut. a larger offset will suck the wheel in giving less clearance for the strut but more for the outside.

imho i think the '07 sentras, especially the se-r and spec v, need the wheels to come out a bit because as they stand oem they are sunken way back into the wheel well, and between that and the already large spacing between the tire and fender the wheels look way undersized for the car.

[gotak]

Doesn't pushing your wheels out does create more load on your bearings as now you have a longer lever in the form of the wheels being out further?

[jbarbaresi]

Doesn't pushing your wheels out does create more load on your bearings as now you have a longer lever in the form of the wheels being out further?

if you are not using a spacer the hub will be in the same relation to the wheel hub reguardless of the offset, even though the outside edge might be pushed out futher. the difference between using a small spacer is negligible, less that 7mm or 1/4in.

[500dolla]

Thanks all for your input, i did get the spacers, they work good but im just going to get 4 steel wheels for the time being, i didn't know custom wheels would be this much of a *****. I can either sell for a pretty penny(around 1000 total) or keep for my next car(hopefully can handle the rims)

[loonx]

hmm interesting..

[nametakennow]

It's not at all obvious that you're just getting your post count up arbitrarily, loonx...

/sarcasm

If you have something useful to add, go for it, but if you're whoring so you can use the Classifieds section or whatever, that's just stupid.

[jbarbaresi]

Thanks all for your input, i did get the spacers, they work good but im just going to get 4 steel wheels for the time being, i didn't know custom wheels would be this much of a *****. I can either sell for a pretty penny(around 1000 total) or keep for my next car(hopefully can handle the rims)

or you can go with your original thought and sell the mazda for a 240, or a sentra! what kind of wheels are they?