Skip to main content

Hi.    I am a new member.        I recently purchased a CMC 356 wide body from a guy who had started the build and lost interest.    I have been trying to find information on the wheels I would like to buy.      I would like to purchase the same rims as shown on the attached picture.      I would also like to use the same size rims as shown on the picture.    I believe they may be 17" x 8" on the front and 17" x 10" in the rear, but I am not sure.    I would appreciate any help.

Regards,

Steve

Porsche 356 Best Mag Picture

Attachments

Images (1)
  • Porsche 356 Best Mag Picture
Original Post

Replies sorted oldest to newest

And just to get you thinking a little more, a 17" X 10" wide rim on the rear is one helluva big (wide) rim and may not fit on a swing-arm suspension.  It'll take a lot of spare horsepower just to turn those wheels/tires.  You might wish to think about something narrower for both front and rear, like 6"-7" front and 7"-8" rear, but with a proper offset to properly fit in your wheel wells and look "right".  

Yeah, my car's a CMC widebody - looks like the same body as the red one.  I used to have original Fuchs all around:  7" rears with 225's on them and I loved them with 6" on the front with 205's.  Running a 2,110 it seemed to have plenty of "go".  I traded the rears for another pair of 6" rims and now run 205's all around so I can rotate them - plenty of tire for the wheels and car and the look from the rear, while no longer "YUGE!", the tires are still pretty wide.

Looking at the red car photo, the rims look like the repro wide rims that VS sells on some of their cars.  They're dished out a couple+ inches so they don't need spacers and, IIRC, are 7" or 8" wide.  Kirk may have wider ones, I don't know.

gn

Yup, take your time.  There are several dimensions to consider; nearness of the tire to the wheel well lip on the outside, nearness of the tire to the spring plates on the inside, overall diameter of the rim, overall diameter of the tire you wish to use and, of course, the offset of the mounting flange to the rim centerline (whether the rim sits inward or outward versus the hub.  All of those get juggled to get you where you want to be.  D

And don't forget that if the car sits really low and you're running 17" (or larger) rims, the outside edge of the tire will hit the inside of the rear wheel well as it slopes down from the rear cowl to the fender lip, somewhere along the line when you "bottom out" the rear suspension.  This is less expected on the red car with the lower-profile tires than on my car with a little more tire outside of the rim.  That can be minimized by raising the rear of the car or, if that's not cool then maybe coil-over rear shocks to assist the rear torsion bars but either solution might make the ride harsher.  (but if you run "rubber-band" low-profile tires it'll ride a bit harsher, too.)

Thanks guys for all the good info!

Bill,

Could you please let me know what size front and rear on the black car?    This is exactly what I want for my wide body.     Rim size front and rear,  tire size front and rear and offset front and rear.    I now know the rims come from Vintage speedster (Kirk)

Thanks again to all !

regards

Steve Vacker

Speedy1 posted:

Thanks guys for all the good info!

Bill,

Could you please let me know what size front and rear on the black car?    This is exactly what I want for my wide body.     Rim size front and rear,  tire size front and rear and offset front and rear.    I now know the rims come from Vintage speedster (Kirk)

Thanks again to all !

regards

Steve Vacker

Sorry, not my car. Just wanted to show you another angle and how Huge they look. Call VS...

crhemi (Bill) poboiinhawaii posted:

Look for a set of Fuchs and you won't regret it. I'm hording three sets, all 16" x 6" & 7".

 

 

crhemi (Bill) poboiinhawaii posted:

Look for a set of Fuchs and you won't regret it. I'm hording three sets, all 16" x 6" & 7".

 

I DO have a MINT set of Al REED restored FUCHS/15 inch from my IM6 that I might be willing to part with.......

Attachments

Images (4)
  • Left Rear
  • Right Rear
  • Left Front
  • Right Front

Welcome to our little group, Steve. Listen to Gordon, here- 16" wheels with 6's or 7's on the front and 8's on the back. For tires, 195/55- 16's (24.3" tall) or 205/50's (24") would be good choices for the front, as either will fill the wheelwell, are more than enough tire (for handling) and anything wider will be too heavy for the suspension to control properly (not to mention slightly heavier steering and I would think faster wear on parts, as the elves at Wolfsburg simply never envisioned their design ever dealing with all that weight). On the back, 225/50's (24.7" tall) on 7's or (preferably) 8's, or 245/45's on 8's would look great.

The sizes for the front are a touch short for accurate speedometer reading (kind of a misnomer here, as we are talking about VW speedos, and they are anything but accurate!) but I'm not sure anything much taller wouldn't have clearance issues. Going too much taller on the back (from the stock 25" tall tire) will make the overall gear ratios taller and you may not like what it does to acceleration, as well as making it harder to keep the car 'low to the ground'. 9" rims with the 245's would be really cool, but I think backspacing/offset would have to be 'just right'. I don't know if anybody here has done 9's on the back of their flared tub.

I'm a fan of Fuchs alloys on Speedsters, so of course I think 16's would make your car look bitchen', but that's only my opinion. As nice as the wheels Banzai (sorry, Banzai, don't know your first name) has, it's hard to get anything that wide in 15" tires any more, and I think his combo (6's and 7's) are more suited to a classic bodied Speedster. His 7's have the extra width to the inside (a la the uber rare and ultra expensive 911R rear wheels), which may sit the wheel/tire too far inside the wheelwell for your taste. Great way to get a wider tire on the back of a regular Speedster, though. I'm surprised there hasn't been more interest.

Hope this helps. Al

PS- As for Gordon's taking off the 225's and putting 205's all around (so he can rotate the tires- really?) This is potentially a fine, high performance machine!

Gordon- 

                 You're a Poopiehead!

(it never gets old!)

Last edited by ALB

Yeah, I know......  But I had been chasing a rumble for a while at that time and decided to go with same-sized rims to help isolate the source.  It didn't work, but years later I discovered road force wheel balancing, instead.  

The 7" rears with 225's on them, along with 3/4" anti-sway bars front and rear and Koni shocks (or maybe Bilsteins back then - can't remember), would not let go, no matter how hard I tried on a couple of tracks.  You could feel the limit of the sidewall flex and after that it just held on with no indication of oversteer up to the limits of my courage.  Other, more powerful cars were left behind (until the next straight stretch) while it just carved through the turns.  I was running Continental 50-series back then - decent tires, but it took LOTS of weights to balance them.

Jerome Smith posted:

I actually fabricated a wooden jig to get as accurate measurements as possible and then squeezed 245/35 on light weight aluminum 17 X 8 's all four corners.  Custom 6061 aluminum spacers and a bit of inner fender lip shaving.

He, He, He...

Jerome;

Can you describe the jig you made?

Art

The jig was nothing special.  I used a piece of 3/4 MDF, maybe 6" wide  X 10-12" long, basicallyy the length needs to be long enough to match the radius of the largest tire you think will fit.  Cut a hole near one end the size of the center boss that the wheel locates on and holes for a couple lugs.  Once bolted up you use the back side of the MDF as a datum to get your back spacing dimension and check for tire width clearance all around.  I tried using an old wheel but the 6" wide jig was much easier to get accurate numbers.

Gordon Nichols posted:

I can see that your cat/machinist was just plain worn out after making those wheel spacers....

He was a stray that started showing up around the time I received the kit.  Not long after that photo was taken we brought him in.  He's still kicking, although he getting grouchy in his old age.

 

Not unlike many of you, I'm sure.

Attachments

Images (2)
  • 20170708_110545
  • 20170708_110241
Last edited by Jerome Smith

I appreciate all the good advice.  

 I spoke with Kirk at VS who tells me I should use 17" x 8" rims with a 3.5" offset on the front and rear on my wide body CMC.      I am planning on purchasing the same rims as Kirk has custom made.   I believe they are used on the red car at the top of the first post.     I am still trying to find out how some of the wide body cars I see on line with the same rims have what looks like much wider rims on the rear.    Does anyone know how the guys are using much wider (deeper) rear rims?     See the red car and silver cars higher up in this train of post.     Are they using a different suspension other than a VW chassis?

I have a 65 VW chassis and CMC wide body     I have disk brakes on front and rear.      I do not have a IRS rear suspension.

regards

Steve Vacker

IMG_0021IMG_0020IMG_5703IMG_5764The top two cars looks like the rims may be the same front and back.    I assume they are made at VS.     I like the gray car rims the best and they look like they are larger in back      The black car rear rims looks like they are larger in the rear.   The black cars rear rims are a little too wide for me.       Does anyone know if I can use the wider rear rims on my CMC 1965 VW?

Attachments

Images (4)
  • IMG_0021
  • IMG_0020
  • IMG_5703
  • IMG_5764

The depth of the flares increases from "Flared" to "Widebody" to "Super Wide Body".

Just by eyeballing them in photos, it looks like about 2" width is added for each one.

You could run progressively deeper dish on the wheels from one model to the next, and I remember one guy on here was looking at 10" wide rims, but that is a LOT of wheel/rubber to move around - you would need a robust engine, too.  

Lots of 8" wide wheels on Wides and Supers, though, just figure out what you need for an offset from the hub to fit within the wheel well and go for it.  Vintage used to have several different widths to cover all applications and had them locally made in SoCal.   If you still need to push the rim lip out towards the fender lip, you can run machined, billet spacers (don't get cast ones - they break).

Wait a few weeks for the dust to settle on the VS move and then contact Justin to see about size and availability.

Add Reply

Post Content
×
×
×
×
Link copied to your clipboard.
×
×