Picking Shoes

In my winter boredom, I've had little to do but research, dream, and shop.One of the big draws about the 350z landing in STU is that it can fit ALL THE TIRE. The rule set specifically says that 2WD vehicles, be it front or rear, can use wheels of any size up to 11" wide, and wrap them with any tire 180 UTQG or higher.. up to.. and here's the big one.. 285mm wide.

This is a BIG tire.
Again going back to the rules you can use up to your maximum tire allowed, but you can't rub through fender liners and can at most roll fenders. No cutting allowed.

So, can you fit this much rubber underneath a 350z? Absolutely.

The back is zero problem at all.. people who go with staggered setups will often put 315s or 325s and they fit fine with a little extra camber. A 285 on the back is a no brainier. The front on the other hand, that gets a little more tricky. a 285 is pushing the upper limits as to what can slide under the front fenders.

When the rule set came out, I was looking high and low for anyone who had been putting such rubber on the front of the z.. a lot of 265s, hearsay, and pictures with very little info. I had remembered years back that the magazine Sport Compact Car had done a non-staggered setup with some big rubber. I knew I'd never find that particular copy of Sport Compact Car again, but maybe someone had put it online?

Well, if hell hasn't just frozen over. It looks like a lot of the content of Sport Compact Car was consumed by Modified Magazine. The Article is Project 350Z Part 2: Balance. It's complete with tons of detail I came to expect of SCC back in the day.. Tire sizes, wheel sizes, offsets and any spacers used.

[caption id="attachment_35" align="aligncenter" width="300"] Oooh... that looks nice[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_36" align="aligncenter" width="300"] Just Clears, but I don't need much room. the wheel is static to that point.[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_37" align="aligncenter" width="300"] This picture pretty much exactly what i was looking for... i just wish it was a bit lower so i could see the wheel clearance.[/caption]

 

So, now I know that a 275/40-18 tire fits on an 18x9 wheel with an effective offset of +30mm, and I know that there's very little room to further bring the tire inboard. Using this info, I can crunch some numbers, or use yet another handy online calculator, like this one: 1010Tires wheel offset calculator. So I had something to start looking and sizing, but nothing beats finding something confirmed. I knew I'd be looking for 18x10.5 or 18x11" wheels.. so the crawling would continue.. not like I have to buy wheels right now, right?

So, I managed to find a hit on a 350z wearing 285s all the way around.

[caption id="attachment_41" align="aligncenter" width="300"] Oh My...[/caption]

 

The car is running on 285 wide tires, on 10.5" rims with a +15 offset. Thankfully, there's a fairly wide selection of wheels in that size, including my favorite light weight go-to, the Enkei RPF1 , Clocking at 19 lbs.

Then another update popped up. Brian Peters, a name you'll probably be hearing alot in this blog, updated his build thread with wheels that fit the maximum. 18x11 +20 wheels, paired with 3mm spacers (+17mm effective offset). Brian is also running the 285/35-18, not the 285/30-18 I plan to run.. this actually gives him less clearance on the curved upright of the front suspension.

[caption id="attachment_43" align="aligncenter" width="300"] Yup, They'll fit.[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_44" align="aligncenter" width="300"] And look good too..[/caption]

They're XXR wheels which isn't really a great brand, nor are they they the lightest (at a bathroom scale 25lbs), but they have price going for them as a set of 4 can easily be had for around $700 on ebay. That's less than half the price of the RPF1s.

After all this, I've pretty well identified exactly what sizes will fit, and have been keeping my eyes open for lightweight options that may spring up.

I've gotta give the flushtards out there a bit of a hand, as their efforts to screw up their cars have made nice wide wheels fairly more common.