[Bill Verburg]

Originally Posted by KTL

Bill,

Thanks for posting that car picture. I believe that is the one I was recalling.

Completely agree that we often have to take people's word with a grain of salt because they don't always have wheel widths correct.

Mattt made his front 17x9 via a combo of wheel surgery and spacers http://forums.pelicanparts.com/porsche-911-technical-forum/861999-9-front-wheels-under-carrera-flares.html

Yes, but most of the width on Matts' 9 is on the inside, Even w/ the stock metal shock covers removed the tire(255) he had was rubbing hard on the bellows. Last I heard he was going to try fitting a 245.

The front wheel well is greatly restricted by the shock dust cover and inner wall in turns on the inside and by the inner edge of the lip on the outside.

You can fit a wider tire by raising the car and or fitting a shorter tire.

This graphic shows the outer and inner limits for wheels


This is better because it shows the limits for tires.
All tires are different, some are right on the nominal sidewall spec others are +/- in section width, tread width, tire height and shoulder profile.

All are distorted to some extent by mounting on wider or narrower wheels

All distort dynamically by road forces.

Suspension spec and alignment add or subtract to the amount of room a wheel/tire assembly needs

Doing these for wheels is easy because a wheel is strictly defined by it's specs, for the above reasons tires are much more difficult to do and need to be handled on an individual basis, both wrt the wheel it's on and the individual tire line.



I was going to include Mats 9" front in this but it is so far off the chart as to not be useful. If any one wants to see where Mats 9ET35 w/ a generic 255 tire sits in the above here are the tire front/back space specs, a nominal 255 can be wider or narrower than 255 so both of these can grow or shrink w/ a different tire.
3.62"/6.38"