What width/offset guidelines for ZXT?

[Guest jjohart]

Hi, I have been looking into doing a staggered front rear arrangement of tires and wheels. Tire Rack has basically given me the safest specs for improvement without messing up the car's alignment/suspension clearance, so that is probably to be 205 55 16 front/225 50 16 rear. What I didn't know, and still don't understand, is what rear width should be to decrease oversteer, again, without disturbing the car's alignment, front/rear braking effectiveness, generally neutral handling (no excessive effort at steering wheel), etc?

In the conservative advice of Centerline wheels on phone support, they flat out said to me that anything over a 7 width wheel will mess with the stock suspension or wheel wells on an 83 280ZXT. They said older Z's had more play, but not mine..ugh!! I don't know what my preference would be, but I'd prefer something more like a BMW M3 effect, maybe 7 width front and 8 rear, but I really don't know what I'm talking about...like should I go 6 in the front or what? Looks aside, I really want the feeling that the rear end is glued in to the road on turns, without a ton of noise, vibration or weird handling vibes on the straights or twisties.

Is there any general rule other than aesthetics as to matching front/rear tire widths...how much does it have to do with the tire sizes picked?

If I stayed with 15 in tires or even 14's, is it only a matter of personal preference as to front/rear widths?

Finally, I tried to talk to Weld wheels about a staggered set, but they didn't even know what offset to use...3.5 or 4.5/front rear? I thought most z's were "zero offset", so how can I use such positive setting wheels?

Thanks

John

[Guest das280zx]

I am no expert, but I will tell you what I ended up with. Tire rack sells, or used to sell some wheels called Kosei, K1 racing wheels. They were available in many offsets. One offset was +13mm in 16x7.5" I figured these should fit my car (81 zx 2+2). I was wrong of course, they rubbed in the front, really bad. So I had Ross at modern motorsports make me some 8mm slip on front spacers. This effectively made the offset about +5mm, which was just about right. I think the tire might rub at full compression of the suspension, just a little bit, but they fit good. In the back, I run no spacers at all. The wheels fit just fine, there is alot of space back there. I am running 225/50/16 tires. I wouldn't go much bigger without more offset. I don't think you would want to run much more than 235 in the front, no matter the offset as the tires would have to stick out a little bit from the fender to make them fit, and that always looks kind of silly. So if you get the right offset, 225's will fit all around. I think you could go with 7" wheels with 4.5mm offset and 225's all around no problem. It doesn't seem to affect handling that much. Car kind of wanders a little bit, but not that bad.