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I thought a new thread dedicated to wheel fiment and choice would be a good idea and act as reference for SWB builders.
I will be adding more accurate measurements once we have a kit fully fitted, but for now here are some rough sizes of various wheel and tyre combo/emamples.
Stock 16" Z3 wheel on 1.9 (narrow axle) gives an arch to tyre inset of 65mm
Jag 6.5 x 15" bolt on wires fitted with 205/70/15 tyre protrudes 10mm past the rear arch
9x16" Dayton wires with 255/55 tyre are going to need some arch extensions:
I thought a new thread dedicated to wheel fiment and choice would be a good idea and act as reference for SWB builders.
Jag 6.5 x 15" bolt on wires fitted with 205/70/15 tyre protrudes 10mm past the rear arch
That's interesting as the offset of the Jag wheels is 30mm which is only 12mm more than the OEM wheels though it looks like most of the poke is due to the tyres.
9x16" Dayton wires with 255/55 tyre are going to need some arch extensions:
My advice would be to drive some z3s first, go for the spec of car to suit your needs, Chris has designed the body to fit wide bodied cars, and there are plenty of wheel choice
My advice would be to drive some z3s first, go for the spec of car to suit your needs, Chris has designed the body to fit wide bodied cars, and there are plenty of wheel choice
The inner wings, on which assembly of the re-body relies, is the same whether wide or narrow rear arch, though there may be some difference between early and facelift cars (knowing BMW, I doubt this)
The narrow body cars also have a narrow rear track and an advantage of this is that deeper dish wheels can be fitted without needing to reshape the new bodyshell.
The disadvantage is that you'll also have WCA's hateful 4 cylinder motor (unless you use a z3m as a base.
My advice would be to drive some z3s first, go for the spec of car to suit your needs, Chris has designed the body to fit wide bodied cars, and there are plenty of wheel choice
Think he has made it to fit both narrow and wide there is a different inner rear boot panel I believe so to doesn't matter which one you buy
I'm definitely going for a 6 cylinder version. Was there a thread re swapping the rear suspension components and drive shafts to narrow body components? Might be a way forward.
I'm definitely going for a 6 cylinder version. Was there a thread re swapping the rear suspension components and drive shafts to narrow body components? Might be a way forward.
Gary
Hi Gary
Apologies for missing this thread and not replying earlier. All good advice from the guys above. Depending on your type/choice of wheel it is possible to get some fairly wide wheels/tyres under the car even on the wider axle. Bob's car for example is currently sat on a set of staggered BMW 16" alloys which are 8's and 9's and fit comfortably under the arches:
Banded steels will obviously let you fine tune exactly the offset and width that you want, wires on the other hand are quite limiting in choice of size and offsets unless you have them custom made.
I would imagine that swapping rear axles and/or rear swing arms/driveshafts is possible to, but I personally am not a great fan of oily bits anymore, hence developing body conversions!
Hi,
Thanks for your reply. It will be interesting to see which way people go with wheels.
I'm favouring wires,but as you say choice is limited. I would like to get as much dish to the wheels as possible, so banded steels may be a good option.
The car is looking great and the details are coming together well.
The internet is a terrible thing, and I am now spending far too much time on it
I have a 2.2 M54 engine z3 auto (personal choice) it came with air conditioning, and heated seats and being an m54 engines car I have fitted cruise control, 2 parts required, just plugs in.
Looking on all the Google sear areas and the BMWmini spares site, it appears that fitting a z4 rear drive flange/hub will bring the rear in by 20mm
The early lower powered e36/e46 3 series cars had solid rear discs which are 60.1 mm high and 280mm diameter as opposed to the z3 with 83mm high and 272mm diameter, handbrake shoes on the 3 series are same diameter but narrower, disc same machined area though
The calliper bracket mounting bolts are a standard M10 10.9 strength shouldered bolt, 26.5mm long,
If I bought some 30mm 10.9 bolts and put a 3mm shim between the caliper bracket and the hub to centralise the bracket on the disc, and turned a 3 series disc down to 272mm diameter this set up would appear to be good to go
This could potentially give a 40mm decrease in the rear track on the 6 cylinder wide bodied cars for not a lot of money - 2nd hand or new flanges, new wheel bearings, discs and some bolts:
I understand the 2.8 model is wider than the other models but by how much ? I'm looking to build my car around either the 2.0 or 2.2 and I want to fit wire wheels . The best size looks to be 6" - 15" with 195 / 65 - 15 tyres . With the hub conversion I hope they will fit just within the arches , but I don't know for sure.
According to Carfolio.com the 2.8 rear track is 67mm wider than the pre-facelift 1.9. Facelift cars and all 6 cylinders cars are the same as the 2.8, except the z3m.
Found this excellent site with visual tool on tyres/wheel sizes.....willtheyfit.com that will show you your current setup and then what the difference would be for any other tyre/wheel size, including offsets.
I currently have 245/40/18 on the rear and looks like 225/60/15 wouldnt be much difference having pondered if a 15" wheel would look too small under the arch.
I have no affiliation to the above site, just wanted to share as its best I have found so far.
