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very wide 17x14 wheels


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Yes... I went looking for negative offset wheels first. I wasnt planning on going this big, but there was an opportunity for some great vintage wheels and I decided to go ahead with it. Once the wheels, then I needed to find the flares, and from what I could find the Works flares out of Japan were the biggest flares you could get other than IMSA or YZ complete fender replacement.

 

I measured them out, the flares are really wide at the bottom and taper back. The front flares measure 11" from bottom corner straight across. The rear flares from bottom corner across measure out 10". The material is FRP.

 

Front Flare: http://i.imgur.com/vAy20XM.jpg

Rear flare: http://i.imgur.com/bfJGe53.jpg

 

 

I think because they are so wide in the front it might help conceal it a bit. From the side you wont notice so much, but looking from the rear of the car, may look odd. With the front flares being the widest in the front, Im more concerned about them not fitting right than the rear since the fronts wheels are only 10.5" wide (that spacer may help here a lot). I am a little bit concerned about the rears and that 2" adapter, but I could always adapt the hub later which would then get rid of that.  Another thing is about a 3 piece wheel is that they can be re-barrelled to almost any size you want.... there isnt many choices in tires for 17x14... only 2 road tires, Michelin Pilot Sport 2's, and Pirelli PZero's. The few others are race car tires (Hoosiers and Kuhmos) Kuhmo Ecsta XS is whats on the rear's now.

Edited by AZGhost623
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Mocked things up today. Im in love with these flares...  :wub: they will fit perfectly when they get bolted into position and compliment the existing lines just right.

 

The backspace on these wheels is 2.25", so very close to the wheel hub. With the adapter, it pushes the wheels out pretty far. The front wheels barely fit under the flares and wont need any modifications, the rears, is a whole other game. Despite my friends saying roll with it, im going to get them changed. From the edge of the center of the flare to the outside of the tire, its 5" over. So I think at this point I have two options.

 

Rebarrell the rears (maybe a 17x12? and/or change backspace / will need to figure out how much I can go before rubbing suspension parts). Second option redo the rear hubs on car to a 5x114 eliminating adapters (silvermine motors 180$) gaining me 2" which still wont fit under the flare, but the center of the tire will be under the car at that point. Currently the center of the tire isnt even under the car, which I dont think is very safe.

 

The adapters are super high quality and despite what they look like, are very light.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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So met with Wheel Specialists out in Tempe, AZ. They are a extremely highend wheel shop. My lowly Z was among Bentleys, Porsches, and Lambo's for a few hours while they took measurements off the car, and wheel. They took the tire off and checked out the wheel. Apparently its an old school 'sandwhich' style 3 piece wheel. No one makes these wheels anymore like this they said. They are held together by epoxy, not welded. The shop quoted me 3800$ to rebarrel the two wheels IF, HRE can still provide a sandwich style barrel in 17". They do seem to want to work with me...they are going to call around next week and see what they can come up with. They are going to see if an Asanti or Lexani barrel will work instead of an HRE barrel. They are also going to call a place that they know of that does generic barrels, but they are still trying to keep to a sandwich style, which may be impossible to find since this is an early 90's wheel. 

 

What they couldn't answer/tell me is why I have found 17" barrels in various sizes ranging from 150-250$ online and said they fit the HRE bolt pattern. You take the face off the current wheel, and bolt it onto the new barrel, and weld it together. Whats the big deal? Anyone know? The said it wont work because its a sandwich style now. If the face bolts to the barrel, and if the bolt pattern is right, why does it matter? I was expecting something like $1500 for both wheels not 4k..

 

Their lead machinist said they could just flip the face around, and then polish the inside of the barrel. It would give me a 4" lip instead of the 10" lip it has now on the rear. The Front wheels have a 5.25" lip, so it may look weird with the front having a bigger lip than the rears and then I lose the coolness factor of the huge lip. It would be about 500$ for both wheels.

 

So far until I hear back from them, my choices are:

 

1. Send rear hubs to Silverminemotors.com to redo the rear hub to 5x114, negating adapter, run wheel as is, extending 3" over the fender flare.

2. Flip the face around on rear and polish the inside of the barrel

3. Pay 4k to have the wheels rebarreled IF HRE still sells this style (not sure this is really an option, HRE sells brand new wheels for 2k each now!)

4. Sell wheels and keep looking (wheel couture has expressed interest in my wheels)

5. find another shop to talk to for 2nd opinion, which would be out of state at this point

6. Hope Wheel Specialists can pull a rabbit out of their hat next week

 

Wait on #6, but I think option #1 is my best bet so far.
Edited by AZGhost623
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  • 2 weeks later...

Wheel shop here in Tempe, AZ couldn't do anything they tried. Too old, and HRE doesn't have the tooling to do anything with them, again too old. However, they did find a company out of the UK that has a pretty close knockoff if I wanted to go that route. They can build it any size, any offset, anything you want basically, and pricing seems ok. However, I didnt want to risk the chance of it not looking right. http://www.imagewheels.co.uk/large_wheel_pages/b11.html I did contact them, and got out the door pricing, not too bad, but not my deal.

 

These will stick out a bit with the new axles, but Im not too worried at this point anymore. It will only be a couple inches now without the adapters.

 

So I got some 27 spline stub axles and companion flanges off a car here in town through craigslist, and sent them over to silvermine motors to do the 5 lug conversion on. This gave me a bit of time to work on my car to get the stub axles off, and if I ruined one not a big deal since the good ones are at Silvermine. Its a good thing too, because the passenger side didnt want to come off at all. BFH to the rescue and it came off, but it got pretty beat up in the process... Got the axle nuts, new bearings, and seals all ready to go in once they come back from Silvermine.

 

Getting closer!

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Edited by AZGhost623
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1. Send rear hubs to Silverminemotors.com to redo the rear hub to 5x114, negating adapter, run wheel as is, extending 3" over the fender flare.

 Are you saying the wheel will still stick out 3" past the flare? If so, that's not going to be a good look, at all.

 

 

I hate to be a naysayer, but if you can't get them resized, I just don't see them working for you. And at nearly $4k, it would be easier and cheaper to order from a place like CCW, although I know CCWs just aren't the same as a vintage wheel, aesthetically, so I can understand why you wouldn't want to do that. But 17x14 is just too damn big. Unless you want to move up to something like an IMSA widebody? But if your wheels are sticking out 3" past your bodywork, it's just going to look ridiculous.

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We can shave the inside hub on the wheel a bit... about 1" down and it wont affect the integrity of the wheel or the bolting of it. They are very very thick. When all said and done, it will be less than half a finger length passed the rear flare. I'm ok with that... I was also told (have not verified) but if I get the T3 adjustable rear LCA's I can adjust the wheel upto 1" in which will also get me more room. I have no plans to do this yet tho and need to do further verification that its possible to do that and any ramifications on tire wear because of it.

Edited by AZGhost623
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Half a finger length wouldn't be too bad, could probably make up the difference with stretched tires, if that's your thing.

 

I'm thinking another option would be to have a shop take a few inches out of your outer lip. There's companies that provide the same service to widen/narrow one piece wheels. But there may be issues with that method too, since this is mostly done with steel wheels.

 

If you ever plan on upgrading your rear brakes to something like the AZC kit with Wilwood calipers, you may have clearance issues if you shave down the hub.

 

I'd be a little hesitant to adjust your wheels in an inch with adjustable control arms. I could be wrong on this, but my gut feeling is that you'd be messing up your suspension geometry, and possibly causing issues with your CVs or halfshafts binding.

 

Is this a rare set of wheels? Might be worth getting another set in a more appropriate size.

Edited by rturbo 930
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HRE505's are pretty rare, they show up from time to time, but they were mainly found on high end cars back in the day. From what I have seen, they were an option wheel on the Ferrari 288's and 308 GTO's.. I have no plan on getting rid of them...I've loved these wheels for some time ever since I was a kid and first saw them. HRE still makes them in their vintage line but 18"+ and starting at 2,000$ a wheel. I think I was close to 10k out the door the way I wanted it... I would have to be in the drug running biz to support that kind of $$$ right now LOL - 

 

Ill start off just fitting them as is, once I get the axles back from silvermine motors and go from there. I did talk with a fiberglass guy who was more than willing to do a little reshaping of the flares in the rear if I wanted, said it would be pretty simple to do to extend it out an inch or so... so for now, just going to go with it and see where it takes me. 

Edited by AZGhost623
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well I got one side semi done today before the dinner bell rang. (started late today)

 

The best way I can explain this is a fat guy trying to fit into skinny jeans in trying to get the axles mounted to the stub axle flanges.  After greasing up that whole inner chamber, Im kinda wondering if built up air pressure is keeping it from going back together again. Putting it together a lot of grease came out because of air pockets pushing it out. But I did grease the hell out of it tho as it seemed like very little was inside when pulling it all apart. Probably a good thing I did this... Both sleeves were a bit discolored from heat too. Its torqued to 200 ft lbs as its supposed to be. Ill have to play with it some more.

 

Got the nice nuts that dont require them to have the divot in them to ping them in. Used anti-seize on the entire stub axle, and then some blue locktite on the bolt. Greased everything up, filled the cavity up with grease and put it all together. Used my cordless to zip the bolt down, followed by the torque wrench.

 

And dang, when did bearings get so expensive... $200 worth of new parts...

 

43262-W1200 NUT LOCK AXLE $4.73 2x $9.46
43215-E4100 BEARNG-WHEEL $41.55 2x $83.10
43232-E4100 SEAL GREASE $5.67 2x $11.34
43210-E4100 BRG RR AX IN $37.94 2x $75.88
$30-ish in shipping

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Edited by AZGhost623
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Ok, everything is back together, everything spins nice and freely without any noise. The driver side was definitely easier on replacing the bearings than the passenger side...

 

So did the first fitment test, and ran into another small issue. Before I cut these 'nubs' off to make it flat, I just wanted to make sure Im not missing anything important here on why they need to be there.

 

Also on a side note, I finally may have found someone who can rebarrel the wheels if needs be. Since this tire size is getting harder to find (335) I am looking at going down to 17x11 and running 315/35...  Ill have them do a 3" inner lip, and an 8" outter step lip so they match... They will also fit under the flare completely at that point too. Right now Im half a finger length over the flare now without the tire being completely bolted down.. They needed one more piece of information before they could quote me on new barrels which was the PCD of the rivets on the face. They seem to be about 324mm which was under their max limit. Ill get them professionally measured out if its a go. Looks like it will be about 500$ a side when all said and done to my door.

 

 

 

I'll take pictures soon..

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Take a measuring caliper (they have them at Lowes) and measure the inside diameter of the center hole in your wheel. Then, measure the outer diameter of the round flange that is slightly larger than the nubs. If the center hole in the wheel is smaller than the center of the stub axle, your wheel won't mount flat on the stub. You will have a wobbly wheel like a clown car. Brother, please quit trying to make these crazy wheels fit-this is painful to watch. Save up and buy wheels made to fit the car. I think coming down from 14" wide to 11" wide is a step in the right direction. 315 is a plenty wide tire.

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Flares on flares. "I heard you like flares, so I ...." LOL. Looks crazy! Pretty excited to see it all finished up. RebekahsZ is really not feeling this lol. Time to do something different, I'm getting tired of seeing the same mods over and over on our cars. Good on you! 

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Change of plans....

 

Front fenders and IMSA body flares, and GTU GNOSE curing now. Everything is measured, and everything will fit. Will be ready to pop out on Monday and will require some work to make these parts go together (easy stuff) Rear Quarters molds still be worked for gas tank filler area.

 

These are the outside of the mold, the ugly side. Gelcoat side is on the inside which is what makes the part.

 

Never to wide! Looking at you RebekahsZ....

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Edited by AZGhost623
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