No, I'm not trying to completely rice out the max (who am I kidding ), but I need to know the negative effects of running 16" wheels up front and 18's in the rear. I want to do this for the drag strip only. I'll be getting lightweight 16's as well as 2 drag radials and I plan to put these on the front wheels when I go to the strip. Now, I currently have chrome 18's in the rear. Since the rear wheels are not going to be driving the car I assume that having the lighter weight on the front wheels will help out acceleration alot. Will having the heavy *** 18's be a very negative thing? My options seem to be:

a). run the lightweight 16's w/ drag radials up front (looking at kosei k1's) with my chrome 18" tsw revos in the rear
b). run the 16's up front with my 15" winter rims in the rear
c). get 4 16" rims and only shod the fronts with drag radials, get regular rims for the rear.

I'd like to avoid choice c since it will be much more expensive. IF I can use the rims I already have I would be much happier. I guess my question boils down to would it be dumb to run lightweight 16's up front with heavy *** 18's in the rear? Would 15's in the rear be better or just as stupid? Sorry if this I'm rambling, it's late. =)

As always, thanks for all the help guys!

PS - any better wheel options out there than the kosei k1's as far as weight/price? Tirerack has them for about $160/peice and the weight is 15.5lbs. Any better deals out there?

 

There are no adverse affects. People do it all the time. I've been doing it for years.

If you are going with a lightweight wheel and tire combo for drag racing however, why not get 15" instead of 16s. You will get better performance out of the 15s, they will be lighter and cheaper.

 

I bought a set of 4, 15"x7" rims just to use at the strip. I have Nitto 555R 205/45/15's on two of them and 22x8 slicks on the other two. Haven't made up my mind yet which is better but when I do I will sell the other two. Of course I just run my street tires on the rear pumped up to 50 psi.
The slicks are much lighter than the drag radials but you have to run them at a lower pressure for traction so there is more resistance, so its somewhat of a trade off.

PS The slicks are bias ply as well which is mixing bias and radials.

Here is a pic of the 205/45/15's, they are small.

 

I highly doubt that 15's will equate to higher performance. I see this weight argument all the time yet nobody mentions the diff betw. casting and forging.

I think the unequal diameters allow one to keep the same low profile, ie 40's or 45's, yet at the same time creating a difference in width front/rear. Corvette and Lotus did it--18 rear, 17 front. I'd do 18 and 17 first, then if you want try 18/16. With the Max I dont think there will be any oversteer or reduced understeer benefit though. The steering is a very weak link indeed on the Max, the achilles heel. No tire mods will make it handle or slalom like a RS-X.

 

The higher performance he is talking about is the gearing change. We aren't talking about taking corners here, its a dragstrip that he wants to use the tires for. My 205/45/15's are 10-15% smaller than my stock tires so gear ratio is effectively lowered giving better acceleration. I get a minimum of .2-.3 diff, some of that is traction but I equate much of it to the lowering of the gear ratio.

 

If you dont think there is a performance difference between a 15" steelies and 16" aftermarekt rims, then your butt dyno is not functioning..

 

Well, got a good deal on 16" tires and rims so it would end up being cheaper than getting 15's. Also... the weight of the 15 and 16" k1's is nearly identical.

 

We're talking about on the drag strip man, think for a second. Lighter weight = better acceleration, there are no two-ways about it.

 

Most people think getting the best 1/4 mile means to continually add mods to the car without reducing weight.

People, reducing weight is one of the largest keys in making a quick car. You can spend all of the money in the world on mods and if you're heavy, it won't make much of a difference if any at all. I'll be hitting the track soon to see if I can hit 15.4 with my auto, no mods. I'm going lighter with more traction.

 

Well now here's a great point. One of my concerns is that the heavy 18" wheels I will have on the rear will be too much "dead weight". For example... do you think there will be a big difference between having lighter 16" rims on the rear than having heavy 18's... even if the front wheels have light 16's?

 

Get a couple more 16's and put cheap narrow light tires on the rear. I just pump my 16's on the back up to 50 and bounce back on the return road.

 

The car will feel the difference no matter what we feel. Trust me. I didn't think cleaning out my trunk would help my times the first time I hit the track. I drop almost a full second when I dropped my weight.

I was going to say what Jime said about going narrow on the rear tires. It all depends one how light you'd want to go. Lighter is always better in dragging. Personally, I'd go with 16's in the rear and 15's on the front. You already have light 16's and I think it will be fine if your tires are sticky enough.

Question: Do you really have to heat up drag radials and what is the normal pressure to run in them? I run my street tires at 22 psi at the track (stock 15's). I would try to spin the tires a bit to clean the debris off of them instead of burning out the tranny.