thinking of new rims, ne advise ?

[flipstylex]

Hi all. I finally saved some money and now able to spend them on new sets of rims. I have a cosmic blue ms3, 20% tint all around. I' m thinking of getting a 18 inch black rims. either hyper black finish or gunmetal finish, without the crome tip.

Question on rims, 1. on 18x7.5, whats the 7.5 stand for.width ?
2. What does it mean when they have an offset. whats the stock offset ?
3.will wider tires work ?
4. whats the best tire to use? do i still have to buy a brodgestone or is there any other cheaper but better quality as well ?
thx

 

[CX-7owner]

7.5 inches of width

Wider tires would work, not too wide though.

A cheaper good quality tire would be a Kuhmo, but not as sticky as the bridgestones, a great tire for the price though.

 

[Young Roids]

Check out Volk rims.

1.yes width
3.yes, with a wider rim.
4.there are cheaper tires avalable.

 

[Sacrilicious]

1. 7.5 is definitely width.

2. Offset is basically how far away from the car's body the wheel is mounted. The higher the offset, the closer the wheel is to the center of the car. You have to be careful here, because you can't have the wheel too close or too far, since too much in either direction causes the tires to rub against the fender when you turn your steering wheel either way. Our stock wheels are 18x7 with a 52.5mm offset, I believe.

3. Wider tires will work, but it all depends on what offset you have and what size the wheel is. You basically should ask around to see what other people have gotten to work. Our OEM tires at 215/45/18, so you figure 225/45/18 shouldn't be too far of a stretch, but 265/40/18 would be very unlikely to fit. This is definitely where you have to play around with things and ask around.

4. There are a huge number of choices for you to make here. First of all, what kind of tires in general do you want? Summer? All season? Winter? This probably depends entirely on your location. If you're in the south, you can probably get away with using Summer tires all year round, but if you're in the north (like me), you will have to worry about changing out your Summer tires for either Winter or All Season when the snow hits. This probably means you want to consider using All Season tires 100% of the time to avoid this nuisance. Keep in mind that Summer tires are a TERRIBLE liability in the snow, since it will likely get you into a car wreck when you go sliding into the railing the first time you try to make a turn at >20mph in cold weather...^_^;

Once you decide what kind of tires you want, you can go to a site like www.tirerack.com and figure out what kind of brands and models are good by looking at their ratings. This will give you an idea of what is good and then you can figure out what combination of factors are important to you (dry traction, wet traction, snow traction, road noise, and tread wear) and then just pick the one that makes the most sense price-wise.

 

[Young Roids]

What is the widest tire someone has gotten to work?

 

[fourthmeal]

235/40-18 it looks like, on an 18x8 48mm offset. Rubbing slightly with a minor drop (MS springs), but nothing a fender roll couldn't cover.

A high offset is required to go that wide, btw. a 40mm offset would be fine for a 7.5" though.

Figure that 2.54 cm = 1 inch, 25.4 mm = 1 inch. so, an 8" would be ideal with a 50-52mm, but they are near impossible to find. a 7.5" at 40 is a good compromise if you want more options.

Oh, critical...you need to get your TPMS modules off your wheels, or buy new ones. EXPENSIVE. Those are the tire pressure things


Last point: The stock tires on this car are actually amonst some of the grippiest tires out there for the size. I mean, nobody likes stock tires, but in reality we are running Porsche rubber here. You run a serious chance of performance loss if you compromise with a cheap tire. I would recommend paying close attention to Tire Rack's reviews of their latest MAX PERFORMANCE SUMMER tires, or close to that.

Personally, I'm looking for the magic super-wide tire and wheel combo that fits...the widest I can find. More rubber to the road with the right offset is a major benefit to a FWD car and its lack of traction on acceleration.

 

[Young Roids]

235/40-18 it looks like, on an 18x8 48mm offset. Rubbing slightly with a minor drop (MS springs), but nothing a fender roll couldn't cover.

Cool.

 

[Sacrilicious]

That offset info you put down was EXACTLY what I was looking for, fourthmeal. I've got a friend with 17x7.5 wheels @45mm offset for a good price, but I wasn't sure if they would rub. Do you think I would be able to put 235/45/17 tires on them?

 

[flipstylex]

thx for the reply guys. I'm like so new to this so i thought of some more questions ;-)

215/45/18 thats oem. 215 is how wide it is ?> whats 45 ? is that the height ?

If i use all season tire, what do they look like . And hows the grip on those . also, will i spin out allot if i try to race it ?

Is bridgestone the best tire for the money ? or is there something else cheaper but do the same performace.

If i do get new rims, can i put the oem tires on my new rims, and put the all weather on the oem rims. Will the shop charge me twice for mounting both ?

also if i do get new rims , do i need a new alignment on the car ?

Another thing is, whats the oem weight of our tires total. I'm thinking about getting something lighter. but wondering if ill be getting a better performance.
And if i do get lighter rims, would i spin out more on high rpm's since the wheels are lighter.

Anyways sorry for the questions guys, im like so new at the whole rim thing.Its also my first turbo car and i dont wanna mess it up. THX

 

[Captain GJ]

215 is the tread width in mm, 45 is the sidewall height. (45 stands for total sidewall height being 45% of tread width)

I went ahead and put my OEM tires on my new wheels which are 18x8 +48mm. Stock tires can fit 7-8" wide wheels per bridgestone's website

No alignment is needed for wheels/tires, only if you have suspension work done; i.e. springs, camber links, etc

Stock wheels weight in around 24 lbs I believe, I have gone with wheels that weight about 18 lbs and havn't noticed any loss of traction. Lighter wheels can only increase performance, albeit very slightly–most notably in the steering

 

[fourthmeal]

here's some tire schooling...also look all over tirerack for info. smart cookies there (with guaranteed fitment,...can't go wrong)


Now, here you go:

215/45-ZR18 - means you have a 215mm wide tire, a 45% ratio to the previous number as a sidewall, and a "Z" rated 18" tire.

If you want to find out how tall that tire will sit (give or take a small amount due to air pressure sag), you can use this math - 215mm x .45 x 2 (two sidewalls) / 25.4 (conversion to inches if you want it) + wheel diameter. So, mathmatically the 215/45-18 tire is 25.61" tall.


The tricky part of tire and wheel fitment is offset vs. what will get hit during suspension and steering strokes. Note that the smallest change can make or break it. Think about it - 8mm is .8cm, which is less then 1/3 of an inch. But, it can really be that close sometimes. Don't forget that increasing a 1/2 inch in wheel width means quite a bit depending on the offset. Here's an example:

Say a wheel is 18x7.5, 40mm. If you were to go to an 8" version at the same offset of 40mm, then you'd have 6.35mm sticking out on each side of the wheel relative to a 7.5" one. Again, not a big number, but it can make things very close.

Tire wise, its the same thing. You want to try your best to keep the stock tire diameter the same (and thus its rolling circumference), because too small or too large and you'll throw off your odometer and your spedometer. Go too big and you stand a chance of hitting your suspension pieces and bodywork, too.

There's more to it, but I'm curious to see what the real-world has to say about all this relative to the formulae. I've already made a thread requesting this stuff...