Well this is annoying: I just swapped my winters on, and the 17" alloys I've been using don't clear the trailing edge of the front left caliper anymore. They worked fine last year, but now they scrape. The only thing that has changed since last winter is that I replaced the front rotors and pads (stock rotors, Hawk ceramic pads, stock calipers) in the summer... the dealership basically said I was SOL and shouldn't be using 17" rims (yeah whatever)... i walked out at that point. But am I pretty much going to have to buy new rims now? Is there that little play in the brake assembly?

just get some spacers. problem solved.

Thanks for the suggestion, but wouldn't spacers just push the rims out further? It's the inner diameter of the rim that is being scraped. The spokes clear fine.

Thanks for the suggestion, but wouldn't spacers just push the rims out further? It's the inner diameter of the rim that is being scraped. The spokes clear fine.

oh sorry. yeah that is very odd.

Try taking the pads off and see if the 17" rims mount. If they do you could pick up some OEM pads to use during the winter.

I don't know about the '8, but replacing the rotors in my old Passat required removing the calipers/carriers. If it's the same way with the '8, maybe there was a little bit of play in the mounting prior to tightening them down.

I'd try removing and reinstalling the calipers/carriers with an eye for moving them towards the center of the hub when torquing everything down.

Of course, I could be WAAAY off here.

The RX-8 brakes use single piston sliding calipers. As the pads wear the calipers move inward. When the pads are new you have the min clearance, as they wear the caliper/wheel clearance increases by 2x pad thickess wear dimension

EDIT: Sorry, missed that it was scraping on the ID. Possible that the Hawk pads are slightly wider than OE. You could try breaking free the bolts that hold the caliper bracket to the spindle and see if there's some slack in the hole/bolt clearance that allows them to move outward slightly before tightening them back down.

The wheel hub diameter must be quite a bit larger than the rotor hub diameter. Spacers that match the rotor hub diameter will still buy you some clearance

After some mucking around a few days, i decided to take the easy way out and just get new rims with more clearance. It's too bad, I kinda liked the old ones. Thanks for all your help though.