I grew a lot of interest in a staggered set of rims made by OZ. Fronts are 18 X 8.5 and rears are 18 X 10. It sounds wide but i have 8" and they didnt fill the back THAT GREAT. I wanted to know what you guys think. Also, what combo of tires should i go with

Fronts Rears
235/45 265/40
245/45 275/40
235/40 265/35
245/40 275/35

Im thinking michelin pilots or dunlop 9000s in the second combo sizes. I want a bit of sidewall because im gonna have very expensive wheels and wish to keep them protected.

 

Are you sure you want wider rear wheels on a FWD car........It will kinda make you look like a poser, IMO.

 

There arent many benefits for a staggered setup for FWD car, but it looks damn good! Unclemax, Slammed95, Airmattdogg all have this type of setup, I believe airmattdogg is running 18s in front and 19s in back.

 

One question...why? It's a front wheel drive car!?!?

 

how about going with 18x8.5 with a +30 or +32 offset for the rear. I have the 350Z 18x8 touring wheels and the offset is +30 and on the rear it's almost flush with the rear fender.

 

Dude i say go for it... Im doing the same thing your thinking about doing. Granted its a fwd car but who cares. It may not be a german import but think of it this way... how many times have you been in the shop this year...

 

So why don't you teach me? How would this set up improve the dynamics of the car?

 

I think that by "a whole lot of learning to do", he means that you have to learn that this guy wants to be a poser and screw up the handling of his car, so you should let him go for it.

 

^ eh, yeah if you care about handling at all I'd say don't do it. The car will understeer right off the road.

 

I dont race, nor do i drive like an idiot taking turns at rediculous speeds. For some reason, the fronts flush out but the rear wont. Look at my sig, all wheels are the same width and tires are the same width, front are good, rears are indented and that what i want to get rid of. I am not a poser trying to look like anyone else, if i wanted a german car i would go buy it and live the rest of my life watching it be repaired on.

Slammed, i dont know if ur being sarcastic but 245/40 and 265/40 is a no go, the 40 is 40% which is multiplied by the first number which is the width. If i do that then ill have 1 tire taller than the other. If i want to have approx the same height, i need to have a +30/-5 difference between front and the back.

Wisky, 2 different size in height, if not balanced out by the tire is very dangerous for the fwd cause like they said it will understear. They just dont know why it would understear, ITS NOT BECAUSE ITS WIDER, ITS BECAUSE ITS TALLER.

BOBmax, doesnt BOB stand for Bend Over Buddy, u go boy, represent for your community. As for my car and my wheels, "so you should let him go for it", i dont need urs or anyone elses permission to "Go for it"
Im probably gonna go with the 245/45 and 275/40 setup if i decide to buy the wheels, im just thinking it the taller sidewall might downplay the look of the 18" wheel.

 

If all you want is the rear tires/wheels flush then why don't you just get a 15mm-20mm spacer hubcentric spacer?

 

I dont know, i was always had a safety concern with those, especially the ones that dont have thier own studs on them.

 

why it is not beneifical, it is more exspencvie and franly not worth it. i mean by all means do what you want, but i wouldn't

 

if you do indeed go with 10 inch in the back, be prepared to trim the inner lining of the wheel well cause you'll be clipping it on every bump

 

slammed95, I might say is one of wheels guru in .org. If you have staggered setup, you'll have more grip in the back and allows you to set your RSB for more aggressive setting.
In the front, 18x8 is just nice because you'll have larger contact patch for accelerating and not spinning your wheels. Turning is also easier if you have narrower wheels in the front.


~limsandy

 

LArrio, thank u, thats the kind of response i was looking for posting this, so people could tell me their experiences if they ever tried it.

Sandy, no disrespect to slammed95 but a "guru" would no that 245X 40% = 98 and 265X 40% = 106 making the rear tire 8mm higher than the front, thats not a good thing. Now if i put a 275X 35% =96.25 which is much closer. HEy sandy, u never replied to me when i asked what shipping method u used to ship those bulbs so cheap

 

ah, that's exactly the opposite of what you want in an FWD car. You want more grip in the front, not in the back. this car already understeers badly, wider wheels in the back will make that worse, and there's a limit to how agressive you can set your RSB (if you even have an adjustable one that is).

 

My bad..... I was curious about this understeer/oversteer thing, so I did a google and do some research. Here is what I've found. Enjoy.


~limsandy

 

well said slammed95! going to a 8.5 in the front and atleast a 9.5 in the rear IS NOT reducing the size of the front...you increased the front width...as well as the rears width, just alil more on the rear is all.

 

thats why i said there has to be a +30/-5 difference between front and rear. If i would use 245/40 on the front then id go with 275/35 on the back. If i was going 265/40 on the back then id use a 235/45 on the front

 

I wouldn't worry about a set of hubcentric H&R spacers that come with longer studs. Like you said, you don't race and don't take turns at high speeds so I think paying a bunch of money for rims that you can't rotate is kind of a waste. If all your looking for is a flush look then go with hubcentric spacers.

 

Why would you put wider tires out back only to have to stiffen the RSB up more to get the back end to "rotate"? You just make the rear end stickier with the wider tires. Then in order to make the car more neutral (to counteract making the car more biased towards understeer), you have to stiffen up the rear.

IMHO, 4-gens need a bigger front swaybar like they have for the 3-gens.

 

I would tend to disagree. Even though you aren't reducing the grip in the front, simply increasing the grip in the back. I feel that understeer is not only affected by the grip generated in the front, but the differential between the grip of the front and back tires. I have never used a staggered setup myself though, so I could be wrong. But if you're correct that wider rear tires on a FWD car will not affect understeer, then I would expect to see both autoXers and road racers using staggered setups on FWD cars, something which I've never seen (or maybe I just havent noticed, who knows). I'm going to do some more research on this because I'm now intrigued. If there is indeed some benefit to be had using wider tires on the rear of a maxima, I'd like to look into it.

That said, with the RSB set as agressive as it can get, as I have it set, you can get the back end moving well on a road course. Using 235-40-17s all around the car was almost perfectly neutral, and handled like a dream in my opinion. Not tail happy, and no understeer either, it was really great.

 

haha...poser or not, i just like the look of the staggered lips! I dont race, I dont autoX, i just use my car to get from point A to b. If getting a staggered setup is the only way for me to get the 3.75" rear polished lip, IMA DO IT! haha,...well, i guess u can call me a poser then....but atleast my max will look better! but thats just my opinion!

 

Let's separate the term 'understeer' (as a handling characteristic) from the amount of front tire grip (as a limitation to lateral acceleration). If no other changes are made beyond putting a wider wheel/tire package in the rear, it will understeer more. And that's what I gather is the extent of Certified's intended mod scope. Note that I am not suggesting that he will lose ultimate cornering grip, though he clearly indicates that he doesn't drive up toward the limits of lateral tire grip anyway.

Understeer/oversteer is the difference between front and rear tire slip angles, which are nonlinear with respect to vertical tire load and camber. Larger front slip angle than rear slip angle is understeer; vice-versa for oversteer. The Maxima starts out with the heavy end losing camber (and grip) while the light end more or less maintains its static camber. And you have some amount of understeer due to these factors as a result. Now add relatively larger rear tires mounted on wider rims (and we should assume that the tires are at least of similar performance intent if not identical make/model). For any given lateral acceleration the rear slip angle will now be lower relative to the front slip angle, which by the above definition is increased U/S.

When it comes to competition, you'd increase the rear suspension's roll stiffness to attract more of the roll moment back there, class rules permitting. There's nothing inherently wrong with increasing rear grip and then borrowing some of that additional capability to coax a little better grip out of the fronts by not transferring as much lateral load up there. Up to the point where you're lifting the inside rear and all further lateral load transfer occurs up front anyway. But I'd probably add more rear spring before adding lots more rear bar just to postpone the point at which that would occur.

As somewhat tangential thoughts here, it's refreshing to see a question regarding wheel/tire combinations that fall toward the handling performance end of the spectrum. Even if the front:rear combination looks a little like a pose on paper, it is only a little. By a wide margin I first question giving up the ability to rotate tires front:rear, particularly when unidirectional tires (that don't swap left to right without remounting and rebalancing) are being considered. That aside, both packages are big steps up from whatever was OE, so grip at both ends has the potential to go up significantly and will with a little tire pressure and alignment tinkering. Keep in mind that a 30 mm difference in tire widths is nowhere near as extreme as you'll see at the strip (either FWD or RWD) or in some of the domestic V8 ponycar/muscle car daily-drivers.

Grippier and/or more nimble handling can be addictive. Until you've been there you wouldn't understand, and there's nothing like the before/after comparison in your own car to get the point across. Certified may well find himself driving the corners with a little more enthusiasm after a while and may return with some more questions.

Norm

 

No one is a poser because of this.... cause no one is trying to be something they are not. The 97-99 conversion people are the real POSERS cause they are trying to pass their car off as something its not, which is a 98 when its really a 95.

 

i would get 245/40 front and 265/35 ..... i have 245/40 and 275/40 and i rub alittle and i have 18x8.5, 18x9.5 .... the fatter tires make the rims look smaller... take a look at mine... http://home.houston.rr.com/myktek/rims

 

myktek, that because u have 3pc, the spokes are smaller therefore rims look smaller. unfortunately 245/40 265/35 are not equal and the rear wheels will spin more times to keep up with the front. I hope it doesnt rub, but look at how they fill the rear up nice. Im still deciding.

 

I don't really want to cause a fuss here but you should know that you must multiply those numbers you got by 2 becasue there are effectively 2 sidewalls when you measure overall diameter of a tire. One on the pavement and one on the top of the rim under the wheelwell. Therefore the difference in ride height is actually 16mm not 8.

 

Your car is not all wheel drive. Slight difference in overall diameter between the front and rear tires is okay. Don't worry about it.


~limsandy

 

With emphasis on the word 'slight'. The ABS may not be very happy if there's much difference in revolutions per mile among the tires (depending on its logic).

Norm

 

Best set up would be 18x8 or 18x8.5 front and 18x9 in the rear with 245/40 tires all four wheels.

 

Do you even know what ABS is for?

Let me put it this way: myktek has 245/40/18 in his front and 275/40/18 at the back. That's like almost 4% difference/error. How about that?


~limsandy

 

some abs/traction control systems will freak out if you have different rolling diameters front to back and the system is programmed to have the same diameter all around. it really depends how the abs/tcs programs are written, whether they take readings just side to side or front to back too. some abs/tcs systems would see a larger diameter in the back (meaning the fronts rotate faster than the back) as meaning the front tires are losing grip as if they were on wet pavement or ice, and would react in weird ways.

i dont know how the max's system works but for some cars it could cause a problem.

 

I'd really rather not respond to your first question, but let's just say that I've got 30+ years of engineering experience, a somewhat greater duration of interest in automotive performance, and have had an ongoing opportunity to read some repair industry material regarding undercar service and leave it at that. So even though your profile provides no hints, I won't ask for any credentials in return.

Back to topic, a 4% difference is only a little bit above the 3% that seems to be a fairly good general guideline. But 4% faster front wheel revs per mile means that the fronts are decelerating 4% faster than the rears for any given stop and the tone ring and the rest will see the fronts as decelerating 4% too fast relative to the rears. At some point you'll invoke the ABS, and it will probably be a little too early up front. In normal to moderately hard driving, you'd never notice. But add a couple of feet due to just one unnecessary ABS release when you've got only 6" to spare and it's a different story altogether. A related annoyance more than anything would be if you get an ABS light and code thrown back at you, which is more likely as time goes by (since the already too-short front tires can be expected to wear faster and front:rear tire rotation to equalize wear has been rendered unlikely). Like I said before, the ABS may not be very happy.

Norm

 

... too much technically mumbo jumbo for me.... this is simple to me.... been driving them for 2 months no issues, there are a few difference, car doesn't pull as much b/c of the bigger wheels, it tends to steer to the left when i get on it...and gas is a BIA....$2 dollars + in houston.... =(

 

all technical facts aside... for the sake of argument.... let's just say that there is NO benefit to having wider wheels in the rear.... WHO CARES?!?! if someone thinks it looks better that way.. who are you to say that they are rice or poser-ish or whatever..... it's not like rims are a major performance mod anyway....... most of the people who buy rims buy them for looks at the cost of performance anyway... so what's wrong with getting wider in the rear for looks???

 

I actually run wider/bigger wheels to:
1) allow me to run lower profile tires. (performance)
2) allow me to run wider tires (performance)
3) allow me to run 13" rotors and 4 piston aluminum calipers (performance/safety)

And yeah, they look nice too. But for me, it's mostly performance benefits. 17x8 all around. 235-45-17s all around.

 

MOST people..........

 

Since I am the only one in this thread to use the "poser" word then I will assume this directed twords me.

Who am I to say that something is rice or poser-ish? I am just like the person who doesn't think its' ricey.......a person with an opinion. That is exactly what I stated in my post ..In My Opinion


So if a person tells me it's a waste to mod my 96 I30 I should yell...."Who do you think you are!!!!".....no, that would be gay as hell to say that. I just don't care too much what they think, just like someone who really wants to run wider rear tires should not care too much what I think.