bigmac

Hey guys,

I like the stock wheels of RX8 but would like to know if I can get the rear one's wider and keep the front one's the same. Just like on porsche the rear wheels are wider than the front ones.

Where can I get the same wheel design (as stock) but wider wheels? I need (2) of them for the rear.

Thanks!

Razz1

Not gonna happen. Any similar design will be different and you will tell the differance.

lazi

uhm i guess you can go with spacers and widen the rear if u really wanted to

NgoRX8

iTrader: (1)

spacers will make it look wider from the side, but that's it.

that's about your only option.

iridearocket

Wider wheels on the back are useless for the RX-8... it's only for show! it makes the car more prone to understeer as well. Manufacturers do this on purpose to road cars becuase most drivers can't control oversteer properly when the car gets out of control... and you can't rotate your tires.... theres really no advantage at all... even the girls will not notice how much cooler you think you car will look.

Silver_Surfer

I saw a stang with factory wheel that was made wider by cutting the wheel in half and adding a spacer. Must of had it done at a custom wheel shop. This was years ago on an older model.

maxxdamigz

iTrader: (1)

Now, I keep hearing that staggered wheels hurt performance. I both understand it and, at the same time, see it differently. Wider tires with a larger contact patch will have an increased effective coefficient of friction. If you put 275 wide tires in the back while keeping the 225 (for arguments sake) in the front, you have increased your rear contact patch. While I agree that this will increase your understeer at peak handling, I don't see where the grip of the car has really been hurt. The 225s in the front haven't been changed. We're not talking any other handling mods. The grip of the 225s, then, I would assume to be identical before and after the rear change. You now have the same break point in the front with a higher break point in the rear. It will prevent you from breaking both front and rear at the same time (thus the understeer) but, prior to your front wheels sliding, nothing has changed. Also, as you tighten the rear suspension and deliver more power to the rear, you could be able to bring your handling back toward neutral. For those who don't push their car passed breaking their tires loose currently, I don't see the real loss of handling from staggered tires. Now, admittedly, those people aren't making use of their full traction potential already, thus negating the need to have wider tires at all, but it seems silly to continuously bring up the "staggered wheels hurt your handling" in most cases. I could be blatantly missing something, but I think will some work you could still achieve neutral handling with unequal tire widths.

DrDiaboloco

I think you've got this backwards. More grip at the rear than the front=understeer

maxxdamigz

iTrader: (1)

Fixed.

DrDiaboloco

I don't think that staggered tire widths would hurt performance in terms of how high the ultimate limits are, but what DOES get hurt is the balance of the car. The stock suspension tuning is dialed in for equal contact patches all around, and unless you do some work, it will handle differently at the limit. In steady-state cornering, the RX8 (like almost all street cars) understeers. It's pretty mild by passenger car standards, but it's there. Adding more grip to the rear and leaving the front the same will change the feel of the car, if not actually decrease the limits the car can reach. Wider rear tires would probably decrease the slight tail-happiness the car can have in hard transitions, though... And if you've added a turbo and have a lot more power than stock, the wider rears would likely help put that power down better.

maxxdamigz

iTrader: (1)

Getting back to the original idea, I think it would be more practical to look for 5 spoke wheels that look like stock rather than trying to contract out for wider stocks. Who makes the Rx-8 wheels?

BRGREEN8

or just buy a different type of wheel all together.