Widest wheel

[PHillary]

Want to know what's the widest rear wheel seen on the late NA car. Will 9.5" fit on the rear with a 52 offset.

[ednj]

I have 10's with a 130 offset &255/40,on the rears and 8.5 w/13 offset & 235/40,on the fronts on a 86 NO spacers,No rubs.

[Techno Duck]

The profile and width of the tire is also very important. I have seen 10 inch wheels with 295/35/18 on the rear and no rubbing, i dont remember the offset offhand but it was a factory Porsche wheel, so probably in the 55 range.

I have 275/40/17 on the rear of my 951 right now and i am getting rubbing in one spot, at approximate the 10-11:00 position on the wheel arch..both sides. This is only with a passenger in the car or if i hit a large bump. My rear suspension is mostly stock.. just Koni shocks and lowered all the way using the spring plate. I am going to roll the fender this weekend which will fix the problem. Camber is set at 1.5 degrees negative.

[Wallace_]

I have 18"x10" in the rear with 285/30/18, and 65-ish offset. No rubbing at all.
I have rolled fenders, lowered about 1", and -2.0 camber.

9.5" with 52 offset on a 87+ with 265/35/18 SHOULD fit, but it will be close.
It depends on if the car is lowered and the camber settings.
Worst case is you have to roll the fenders.

[PHillary]

There really the 18" victorequipment lemans wheel with 45 offset in the front and 49 in the rear with the 9.5 width I'm getting them next week I can't wait! I plan on using spacers just not sure which mm yet!

Thanks to all that responded


Hey! Why don't you all show some pictures of your wheels on the car, I would show you mine but didn't get them yet. LOL!

[Techno Duck]

Offsets in the 40s may be very close.. ideally you would want a higher offset for a late model car. Spacers also are not going to help because they will push the wheel even farther out towards the fender.

[mikepellegrini]

I have 275x40x17 rear and 245x40x17 front. I'm not sure how wide the wheels are (they're Cup one replicas). No rubbing in back but my L front rubs on bumps.

I too am looking at getting my fenders rolled this weekend, which should solve the problem.

[porsche4life]

Is there any benfit performance wise to going this wide?

[944 boy]

Depends on your application. Full race suspension, slicks, big-track races and a future with lots of HP requires big tires.

Spec 944's do great on 225/50/15. I'm just upgrading to 275's because I spin the 225's too much. ;-)

[Techno Duck]

Im running the same sizes front and rear as Mike on 17x7.5 and 17x9 C2 Turbos. Alot of it comes down to tire manufacture also, everyone has different actual footprints.

As for the advantage of wider tires, better grip and better traction. I found 225s for my 8v n/a were just about perfect for track use. My 951 spun the 255 pilot sports i had on the car with ease in 1st and 2nd and would do 3rd on cold nights. I still get some wheel hop with the 275 Kumho slicks on the back if i punch it in 2nd. Wider tires also improve braking distance somewhat because you can lay on the pedal alot harder before the fronts will lock up. One of the most amazing experiences i had in my 8v 944 was the first time i auto-x'ed with r-compounds and the 951 Brembo's on the car. I was using 225/16 Kumho v710s (literally gumballs) and had to completely readjust learning to brake with that car...the stopping power was incredible..147bhp, 2600lbs...it was like the hand of God on tap.

The downsides are plenty also. Cost factor increases alot with the lower profile and wider you go. Also wider tires obviously weigh more which leads to more unsprung and rotational mass which really effects alot of performance aspects of the car. You also need to be careful to keep a reasonable ratio between front and rear widths. Most of the stock 911 sizes are like 205/255 which works reasonably well for them, but will cause 944's to understeer horribly when pushed at the limit. Not necessarily a bad thing for a street driven car, but when your on the track its not the ideal action you want the car to take.

[PHillary]

Some how they got them to fit on this car

[PHillary]

AND

[PHillary]

Originally Posted by Techno Duck

Offsets in the 40s may be very close.. ideally you would want a higher offset for a late model car. Spacers also are not going to help because they will push the wheel even farther out towards the fender.

Your right about the offset figured I might have to have the fenders in the front and rear rolled. Also may cut the fenders about an inch or so and have flares added on. Hopefully the spacers will make them fit or I may just have to sell the rims to one of you early 944 guys.

Problem is that wheels I like are either way to expensive and pretty(3-5,000.00) or cheap and ugly(600-1200)!

These are the only ones that come close to fitting in both catergories for me and they still might not even fit. It's just I saw them on that white 85.5 NA car and went nuts! kinda ordered them without thinking.

There's no telling what they did to make them fit on that car, but it doesn't even look like they had the fenders rolled.

Do ya'll agree?

[PHillary]

Found this, How correct do you all think they are?

http://wheeldynamics.net/appguide.html

[Techno Duck]

There are a bunch of techniques to roll the fenders and a few guys on Rennlist have posted up that the Eastwood roller dosent work on a 944. This is because of the bolt pattern that we have (130mm). Eastwood makes a 'truck' adapter that is supposed to fall within the range of our bolt pattern, but a few people said it dosent fit still. I originally modified this roller for my friends '89 which we stuffed 315's on the rear of with stock rear body work.

Anyhow i figure this may come in handy for anyone trying this in the future. Basically you can cut slots into the bolt pattern and it will fit the 944 hubs just fine. This does not effect the function of the tool at all and will still work fine on other cars.





And here is where i was getting rubbing on my car..



I just finished rolling both sides in the same spot. The passenger side rubbing was significantly worse and took some of the paint off. As a result i had some cracking of the paint under the under side lip of the fender. Not visible unless looking up from below the fender. I used a heatgun to soften the paint, but it was not much help due to the damage already caused by the rubbing of the tire on bumps. The drivers side came out great, no cracking (and was not rubbing badly to begin with). I have not driven the car yet to see if the rubbing is still present.. if it is i am just going to use an air grinder and cut out the entire inner fender lip. Anyways i am going spray over the cracked paint with rubber undercoating to prevent any spreading.

[PHillary]

Techno can you do this for me or can you point me to a real body shop that can do this or can I rent this tool from somewhere. So far I went to three shops and they all say they can't do this.

Any suggestions, your help is much appreciated.

Thanks in advance
Paul

[jgporsche]

I used a wooden base ball bat on my 911 for tire rubbing. Just wedge it in between the tire and the fender lip. Didn't crack any paint and now the 17" tires aren't getting shredded when I take tight turns.

[Techno Duck]

Paul, where are you located? I can do it for you but i cannot guarantee the paint wont crack. Baseball bats have been the #1 preferred method for years, look around on YouTube for how-to's on that. I really wasnt sure how to do it so i just went with the roller.

After rolling the portion of fender i pictured yesterday, i was still getting rubbing. Turns out i was getting it on the forward end of the wheel arc. I constantly get it when pulling into my driveway, so to replicate the problem and make it worse, i put 2 cases of water (12 gallons total) in the rear hatch to weigh it down, pulled into the driveway and stopped where it kept scraping. The tape shows where it was rubbing in particular and the areas i just rolled. I have not taken the car out yet but i am fairly certain this will be enough.





The wheel is tucked far into the fender due to the pretty extreme angle i pull into my driveway (uber low front end).

[PHillary]

I live in Staten Island, I will check utube for the bat method and see if I can do it. Using the bat method will have see if the wheels leave enough clearence to stick a bat under there.

[Techno Duck]

Well if you are willing to take the chance i dont mind rolling them for you. I just dont want you to be pissed in the event the paint does crack. For what its worth i didnt have too much trouble on my car with the exception of one spot that was already damaged from the tire rubbing very hard on the paint.