mmm streched tires!

 

Anyone have a picture of a 215/45 or 40 on a 17x8?

 

Are there front camber kits? Do you have to go all out and get a full perfomane suspension?

 

Look at my pic I posted earlier. Mine is a 205, but it's a federal tire, so its really the size of a 215. and its a 45 btw.

 

I like it! Thank you sir.

 

17x8.5

215/45's

same set up as above, on feddys

 

How come federal 205 are like 215? Are they wider than any other brand of tires?

 

Front camber would be adjusted by the camber plates on my coilovers. Coilovers are also much thinner than stock suspension and will give more clearance.

 

Well ya. You do it all with good coil overs. so there are no camber kits?

 

federals seem to be a bit popular on the fronts so far. Are they good for sideways shinanigans? lol

 

yes


Responded to ur pm, but yes, these tires are great! Very sticky, and put out tons of smoke, like uber smoke yo!!! And hold tread pretty well for the amount of thick yellowy smoke you'll be dumping out.

 

Does anyone know how to measure offset with spacers?. being related to the subject since I have a 32 offset if I added a 25mm spacer would the rim resemble a rim with a 7offset? in the picture I posted you can see how the rear wheel is sunk in more and looks weird with the front wheel being flush.

 

Yes, that's right. If you have +32 wheels and a 25 mm spacer, the resulting offset is +7. Imagine you are actually attaching the spacers to the inside of the wheel mounting surface. The result is that the new mounting surface is that much closer to the centerline of the wheel on a wheel with a high positive offset.

If you look at the location of the factory wheels on FCs, the rear wheels are more sunken than the fronts. I've always wondered why Mazda did this. Did it reduce the drag produced by the rear wheels to have them more sunken? (Low drag coefficients were the hot-button marketing point in the 80s.) Did Mazda have the shape of the body set before finalizing the suspension tuning and discover that a smaller rear track had some positive handling benefit (less understeer)? I'd love to know the answer on this.

There were a bunch of other cars from the late 1980s/early 90s that also had weirdly sunken rear wheels. One that comes to mind is the Saturn SL-1.

 

^my ford explorer also has rear wheels more sunk in then the front, I think mazda and other companies do this to allow for larger wheels on different trim levels with out running into problems. It probably best for the economy too since they can order in large quantities instead of 2 wheels one size and 2 wheels a different size. Its pretty much made for the majority of the people instead of those few people who want a more flush look.

and thanks for answering my question about the spacers.

 

I don't think that really explains the more sunken rear wheels on the FC; all the wheels on all trim levels that came from the factory used the same size front to rear. Also, I'm pretty sure all trim levels had wheels with +40 offsets. I highly doubt Mazda set the car up this way to allow future owners to use larger aftermarket wheels. Remember that back in 1986, a wheel as large as 17" would have been really exotic; even the C4 Corvette had 16" wheels back then.

Your reasoning might make more sense for a newer design like your Explorer though. Come to think of it, I have noticed that they often have more sunken rear wheels too.

 

Are you sure the front wheel base is actually wider then the rear? Maybe the rear fenders themselves are a bit wider and with more negative camber on the rear wheels it just looks like they're more sunken in?

@K!NCH, 215/45/17:

 

its all about the offset of the wheel im running a 225/45/17 on the front and a 255/40/17 on the rear stock fenders, no spacers, racing beat springs, and some kyb adj.

 

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sorry for the shitty pix....fd wheels 205 45 30 mm spacer front 225 50 rear 30 mm spacer

 

that's exactly the setup (front/rear) that I need. what tire brand are you running? and where did you get 30mm spacers I can only find 25mm

 

well i just get random tires what ever the shop has i just wanted that size and the spacers were from a small shop by my house there 150 for all 4 witch is really good

 

"Wheelbase" is the distance from the front axle to the rear axle measured along the side of the car. I was referring to the difference in the front and rear "track," which is the distance between the centerlines of the tires located on the same axle.

According to Yamaguchi's book on the FC, the front track is 1450 mm/57.1" and the rear track is 1440 mm/56.7". Of course if you add spacers and/or use wider wheels with lower offsets, you'd be changing the track.

I guess my question was why Mazda did not design a body that would disguise the fact that the rear track is a bit narrower than the front. If anything, the body exaggerates this by having the rear wheels appear much more sunken than the fronts.

 

I was referring to that too, didn't know the proper English word for it, sorry.
I remember reading about a front track being wider then the rear, it decreases understeer. This was about FWD cars though.

 

What size are fd wheels anyway? 17x?

 

There 16

 

Lovely