17 wheel options

[MarkyG82]

Recently took ownership of an Octy 3 estate with 17x7 et49 wheels.  Planning on putting winter tyres on in the next few days. Probably going for 225/45r17 as is on there now. I want to get new wheels for the 'summer' tyres do have the option of getting a wheel/tyre package for winter tyres or new rims for summer tyres and put winters on old rims.

Options:-

Cheapest: winter package 16 inch wheels 205/55r16

Logical: 225/45r17 winter tyres then used 17 rims same as original for original 'summer' tyres

Best: 225/45r17 winter tyres then new 17x7.5 or 8 rims for original 'summer' tyres

 

So, if I go for 'best' option, what offset do I go for? And would 8 wide rims be too wide for the 225 tyres?  Quite like the idea of new wheels filling the arches more so a slightly wider stance would be nice.

 

Cheers

[KenONeill]

@MarkyG82 - Well, most tyre manufacturers recommend fitting tyres to wheels of a width between 70% and 95% of the tyre width. An 8" wheel is 203.4mm, and divided by 225 that gives 90.3% so that's OK.

[MarkyG82]

Thanks. So I could get 17x8 with a suitable offset for my current tyres. Next question is do we know how much clearance there is to the suspension components with the standard setup?

[fabdavrav]

I have 17x7 et45 fitted with 225/45R17 tyres for both winter & summer....

 

TD pro race five spokes for winter as the snow does not clog up in them...& the 1.2 BTCC multispokes for summer....

 

No problems & more protection cushion for the alloy rim as rim is minimum for tyre width..

Edited 6 March, 2018 by fabdavrav

[skinnyman]

On 3/6/2018 at 17:47, fabdavrav said:

I have 17x7 et45 fitted with 225/45R17 tyres for both winter & summer....

 

TD pro race five spokes for winter as the snow does not clog up in them...& the 1.2 BTCC multispokes for summer....

 

No problems & more protection cushion for the alloy rim as rim is minimum for tyre width..

 

I have a similar setup.  I use the original 17" Zeniths in the winter and then a set of 17" Pro Race 1.2 for the summer.  Both sets of wheels have 225 45 17 tyres on them to keep things simple.  I run spacers on the Zeniths, purely for aesthetic reasons as they have an offset of 54, which is way too low for my liking.  The Pro Race wheels have an offset of 45 which is fine for my needs and they fill the arches nicely.

Having said that, I'm going to run a set of 18" wheels this summer to see which size suits me better.  I know the 18" will look better but the 17" will ride better and after seeing the state of the roads at the moment, I may live to regret the move to a larger wheel.....

[MarkyG82]

Thanks all for the comments.  Ended up getting 225/45r17 winters on the original wheels and acquiring a set of 18*7.5 et51 seat rims off here with 225/40r18 tyres for the summer.  Seller kindly gave me a set 12mm spacers to use with them so effective et39 should be nice.

Fitting them next week so will try to get some before and after shots to show how it all fits.