Mazda Rotary Club

General => General Technical => Wheels & Tyres, Suspension & Brakes => Topic started by: Adam on October 05, 2002, 08:48:13 PM

Title: 18\'s or 17\'s
Post by: Adam on October 05, 2002, 08:48:13 PM
Looking at buying some alloys soon for my FD3S.  What size is best, 17 or 18?  i hear 18\'s can mess up the handling.  What are peoples general view on this.  What size tyres should i use on the 17\' and 18\'s.  Cheers

adam
Title: 18\'s or 17\'s
Post by: kevinf1 on October 17, 2002, 11:51:28 AM
The size tyres you need will depend on the width of the wheel (i.e. 7", 7.5", 8"etc).
Afraid I can’t help on the best size for handling - I\'m running stock rims at the moment.  Going too large on the front will slow down your turn in though.
completely non rotary, but a friend of mine runs a caterham and some of the people who race 7\'s actually put slightly smaller than stock wheels on (13" as opposed to 14" I believe) to improve handling.
But then seriously wide rear tyres probably improve your launch of the line if drag racing etc.
I guess where my rambling is leading is that a lot will depend on what you want the car to do...
K
Title: 18\'s or 17\'s
Post by: FRENCH7 on October 17, 2002, 01:55:41 PM
a lot of japanese tuning FD run with 17-8,5 front and 17-9,5 rear but i think they need some extra power ;)
for the correct offset , i don\'t know?
Title: 18\'s or 17\'s
Post by: FRENCH7 on October 17, 2002, 02:03:20 PM
The last japanese FD has 17 - 8 front and 17 - 8,5 rear but i don\'t know the offset ?
Title: Rubber on rims
Post by: eatmyrx7dust on October 23, 2002, 09:21:16 PM
I changed 17\'s to 18\'s but mistakenly thought I would get away with 225\'s.
The handling was poor to say the least.
The solution was to put 265\'s on back and leave 225\'s on front.
There appears to be some correlation between diameter and width !
Title: 18\'s or 17\'s
Post by: Fish on October 26, 2002, 07:07:36 PM
I have just bought a set of 17\'s from Phil G.

Sizes are 235/45R17 on the front, and 255/40R17 on the rear.

God knows how much these tyres are going to cost. But they do look very sexy.

Dan