Anyone running 17x9s on an NA?
 

What I am running now is 15x9 +31 with 225/45/15 and they measure 23” tall with 8.5 of tread on the ground. It looks like this

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I’d like to go to a decent street tire around 255 wide or so and the only thing that is out there are in 17s. The tires measure 25” tall x 10.2” wide at the tread compaired to 23T x 8.5W that is on the car now. Anyone know if I can stuff a 255/40/17 on a 17x9 +36 wheel in an NA?

Well, sure, that's the whole point of the 5-lug conversion :)

Although I think the offset was only 25 or so. And the weighed a LOT. The Bullets were 38 I think.

https://www.v8miata.net/members/cvx_...-gt500-476.jpg

I need to add all of my wheel pics to that blog I guess.

Mike

Sweet! I remember that shot from your excellent wheel post. What size are the tires in the pic Mike?

235/45/17 on rear, 225/45/17 on front. Those wheels are 24mm offset, I was close.

Mike

cvx can u post more pics of your car
close up fenders
direct front / back shot maybe

I'm going to be adding pics to the picture blog I set up. I just added all the wheels, a couple shots may be useful. The rear fenders were pulled and rolled, the fronts weren't. The front plastic bumper was trimmed for clearance early on, as was the Racing Beat bumper later.

I've sold the GT500 wheels, they were kind of pricey, and I didn't like the feel of the car with them. Could have been the tires, because the Bullitt wheels were borderline dangerous with the stock Mustang tires that were on them.

It seems to me that running 17" wheels is certainly do-able and is probably the wave of the future, but I prefer the look and feel of the 16's.

Mike

MiataV8 Conversion: Wheels

im planning on running the 17x8 mustang gt rims
i pick them because they only weight 19 lbs and dirt cheap

I'm thinking 275s on 17x9.5s falls into the go big or go home category....

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i see
u like to rub ....

Nahh just messing around with a tire off a Firebird. Even with flares those 275s are way too tall. I ordered 17 x 9 3/4 wheels over the weekend and will see what I can get a way with for tires. In the front I think 235s would be easy, 245s with some surgery but I am hoping for 255s.

How are people doing the 5 lug conversion?
I am starting to think about my tire options and want more than the 225 Rivals I am running on my Turbo Miata.
How negative will the extreme weight increase of my wheels/tires effect my handling? This car will have the torque, but will it offset the rolling weight?
I plan on a wide body so I can do any tire/wheel I want.....please give me your thoughts.....

Thoughts you ask? I have searched under every rock and on every website for hours on end and THERE ARE NO GOOD TIRES FOR MIATAS! Period that’s it. I don’t care what size wheel or what offset you pick there are no good street tires available that are wide enough for a V8, and short enough to run on a Miata.

I'd walk to the moon for 295/30-15s in a 300 tread wear tire. Even 275s would be worth the trip. But you will never seen them becuase there are no factory production cars that use wide 15” tires to support wider sizes. The Corvette has used wide low profile tires for that last couple decades so the guys in Camaro and Mustang world have lots of great tires available to them. But our little Miatas have no such benefactor.

So like you most guys run 225/45-15s which is the biggest streetable size there is but still a very wimpy tire even for a turbo car. And all the tires in that size are expensive track orientated tires with only 7/32nds tread and a wear rating of 200. So good luck getting even 10,000 miles out of them. At the rate my Rivals are wearing I think 3 track days would completely consume a brand new set of them.

I can't answer your question about handeling with the Miata (yet) but I did go through this with my donor Camaro. I went from 17x9" 275/40 NT05s with 7/32s tread and 140 wear, to 18x10.5" 295/30 Ventus V12s with 10/32s tread and 280 tread wear. I got twice the miles out of the bigger tire which was the goal but no one was more suprised than me that grip for both track and autocross changed very little with the harder tire. The extra rubber on the ground made the difference and over all I saw no down side to adding probably 8 lbs of wheel weight to each corner.

I am in the process of going from 225-15s 200 tread wear to 255-17s 300 tread wear but it will be at least a month before I have mine back on the road to know how it will do.

I don't know how others do it, but here's one way:

MiataV8 Conversion: Five Lug Conversion

The downside is then you can't run 6UL's

Mike

Jim,
Thanks for your reply, and the frustration in your words leaves me little hope of finding what I am looking for. I would love to find a 17x12 wheel that I can run 315/35 or 275/40 tires on. There are some decent street tires available in the bigger size for cars like the Camaro/Mustang. I am going to hack my body all to ---- so I won't have any issues with tire rub and thought the extra rubber would really help my cornering. I am very surprised to read that you couldn't feel much of a negative impact on your car with wheel weight variance as much as 8 pounds. Not questioning you, just surprise. Pleasantly actually. That gives me hope. Everything I have read on other miata forums suggest you must ad the lightest wheels possible or you will burn in hell. I have time to do more research, I just thought I would see what others had come up with. I found this thread while searching and saw where you planned to go to the larger wheel and was hoping to hear about your experience with that.

Thanks Chris. Keep in mind that 8 lbs of wheel weight was on a 3600 lb Camaro that had 425 hp slinging them around. But still I think wheel weight is over blown most of the time. GRM did a test on that on an NC a few years ago and a couple of lbs per wheel made no difference in track times but it did affect feel especially on rough roads.

I agree completely with you 315s would be epic on a wide body Miata! The problem is cutting the fenders and quarters won't get you there. It takes a whole lot more surgery than that!

The deal is the absolute max tire size you can get away with is 24 5/8" tall. Any more than that and you hit the frame gusset on the fire wall on an NA and the upper fender support just rear of the head light on an NB. Both parts are not able to be cleared by rasing the car and both are major structural components of the chassis that short of building a tube frame and can not be modified very much and keep the integrity of the car. You have a bit more room in the back but anything over 25 1/2” tall hits the front of the wheel well at the rocker. The rocker would be no biggie to modify but my plan all along was to run the same size on all 4 corners so it was irrelevant.

So take that 24 1/2 max tire height over to tire rack and start hunting and you will soon be very discouraged. It doesn’t matter if you swap to 5 lugs or go to 16,17 or 18” wheels you are stuck with that height restriction and wide sub 24 1/2" street tires just don’t exist.

That being said there is one significant advantages to going to 17s IMO. We are losing 15” tires all the time as the auto industry continues to move to larger lower profile tires. So as long as BMWs, Minis and NCs have wide low profile 17” tires on them we will have a good supply of options for us too.

If you follow my blog you will see I am going through an extraordinary amount of effort just to go from 225s to 255s and no one in their right mind would do it. There is no question 30mm of width is not worth all the effort for performance or anything else. I just like tinkering on the shop...

Jim,
Sorry I didn't see this sooner. The more I drive my turbo miata the more I think about the LS1 build on the horizon. My plan is for custom tubular control arms to widen my stance by at least five inches. I plan on "tubbing" the rear with custom metal quarters, but I had no idea I was going to run into trouble in the front. Truth is I have not really looked into this, I am only in the thinking process. Make no mistake though, I have a complete 2000 Camaro SS and pretty much everything I need to do the swap shy of an exhaust. So, Jim, what do you think I gain by going with wider front arms? Will it get me at least a 275/17?

Interesting concept for sure. I'm not really seeing the advantage in longer control arms. For most wheels it only takes a small spacer to clear the sway bar at full lock and that much extra width I would think would really mess with the suspension geometry and effect the handling. Anyway I'll have to look again but I think 5 inches is enough to clear the rear frame support. Where it hits is directly behind the tire like where the clutch pedal is mounted so it takes quite a bit more width to clear the foot well area.

But there might be a better solution for you if larger tires. There is quite a few choices in 285/30-18 tires and they are just 24.7 tall. That is the max for sure but it will fit with just a little hammer work and flares. The reason I didn't go that size is IMO 17 already looks like too much wheel and the tires in that size are 50 bucks each more than 255/40-17s. And for me the whole point was tire options and $$s.

Hey Jim, did you ever end up getting your tires for the 17 x 9 3/4 wheels you bought? would love to see how it looks.. I'm a few months away from getting my project finished, but I'm really starting to wonder what wheel/tire combo to get... even 8 inch 15s really narrow the search... never-mind tire

Yes I did Gabriel! 255/40/17s on 17x9.75 +25 wheel fit perfect on the car

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Unless you want to drive it! :D It takes a bus load of surgury to make it work. I still have not driven the car with them but will in a couple weeks.

nice - I'm loving the ones you chose! let us know how it drives, and If it's not too much to ask, when take it for a spin, can you get a picture of the whole car with wheels on? you might have to let us know what you had to do to get them on, I'm starting to like the idea of 17s..

LOL Gabriel you might not want to know! The whole disaster is spelled out on my blog but in a nutshell buying $250 fender flares was too easy so I've spent the 3 months and about 200 hours building a flare / wide body kit that will crack and fall off on the first bump I hit. :nuts:

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Now to be fair I would not have had to make them near this big and simple flares would have worked fine but I was going for bold and differnt. This is my inspiration:

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And this of course... :-)

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Jim, even if you don't stick with those wheels, please post up a set of good pics (side, front and at an angle) so we can see what the stance looks like. I will be coming up to this issue in a couple months. I have the advantage of the wide body, that may help me with choices.

Be glad to Greg. I'm going to have her on the road in about 2 weeks to do a good shake down on everything and get the A/C finished up before paint. I'm running an autocross May 17th and I'll take lots of photos there. After that off to the paint booth!

BTW the only wheel tire combo that I like better than what I have is 295/30-18s and had it not been for the price of tires that is what I would be running now. Not as many 4x100 18" wheels to choose from but a few good ones.

I rolled it out today and got some photos of it. I still have some work to do on the wheel arches but it's getting close. These are 17 x 9 3/4s +25 with 255/40-17s all around.


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Hi Jim,
I believe you did the electric cutout. What muffler/s are you using. Thanks!
Jim Reid

Well you could call it an electric cut out but what it really is is Jim being board one weekend... :D The muffler is the Flyin Miata 3" muffler they use on their turbo systems. It's not ideal but it was cheap and not bad. The long tube borla set up on my donor Camro was much better but I can't get to that with the tiny headers and cats on the Miata. Sounds closer to a 90s corvette. Anyway this is the thread on the cut out I made.

https://www.v8miata.net/bs-16/most-r...out-ever-1470/

Jim, wheel and tire combo looks fantastic. Can't wait to see you finish the wheel arches and get this thing to the paint booth. Again, inspiration for the rest of us! Well done.

Well Jim, you have answered my question. I will definately be running 17's when it comes time. The only question that remains is whether 17x10's will fit in my wide body fenders.

So I put a guide coat of paint on the car and freaked out because the quarters looked like a big nasty wart when they were the same color as the car.
http://i59.tinypic.com/1r83kh.jpg
http://i62.tinypic.com/zob4vc.jpg
http://i61.tinypic.com/svosj8.jpg
http://i61.tinypic.com/ih6xcl.jpg

So I went back to the drawing board and welded up another rocker extension to tie the wart to the quarter panel.

http://i59.tinypic.com/5b42v5.jpg
http://i57.tinypic.com/n5smme.jpg
http://i60.tinypic.com/24oudf8.jpg
http://i57.tinypic.com/fdzpmo.jpg
http://i61.tinypic.com/2rg2bl3.jpg
http://i58.tinypic.com/dhfzok.jpg
http://i62.tinypic.com/2hd1xkm.jpg
http://i62.tinypic.com/deqmmd.jpg

Hopefully the weird wart look dosn't come back when it is all the same color...

Saturday
http://i62.tinypic.com/166evqe.jpg
Sunday
http://i61.tinypic.com/2vcc2yt.jpg
Bummer had to work on Monday...

awsome! totally anxious to see some more pictures once the paint is fully done... guessing that's just the basecoat?

It's epoxy primer. I did 5 coats to build it and am block sanding to 320. Then another 2-3 coats of epoxy to seal it and block it to 600. Then on to paint hopefully about the 20th or so. I have 12 days to get it ready for a track event and I am very nervous about making it!

Bigger wheels
 

Jim, I run 17x10s in the rear and 17x9s in the front. To do this, the original builder (2006) purchased fender flares from Miata Roadster. The flares were
"Tuckin 99 brand, replica Mazdaspeed N2 Miata race care overfenders." They are riveted. A a lot of the original fenders are cut away and some reinforcing welding was done. The good news is: there are several pics on this site. See v8m, 4th screen, My miata (red). Also the build was well documented on: from cute to wild |. Many exotic builds on this site. I hope this helps. You have helped me in the past.

Cool! Thanks for posting that - what a GREAT looking car! What size tires are you running on it?

Thanks, but the credit goes to Chris Ashton and Jaime. You really should look at their site. He did fender flares on a Pantera. Jay Leno said it is a work of art. I run Yokohama Advan Neova 94W (180). Front 235/40-17 and Rears 255/40-17. Thank you for all of the encouragement and help you give us new enthusiasts.

Happy Day!

http://i57.tinypic.com/zjf8s4.jpg
http://i59.tinypic.com/fmsb3m.jpg
http://i60.tinypic.com/8w0akw.jpg
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nice work Jim! looking good!

What's the size for 17/18s you're limited to, 24-25inches? God I'm worried about finding tires. I've found a lot of 275/40-17s, that's a tic too big, ya? 275/35-17s seem rare. r1rs come in 245/35-17 though.

The deal is the absolute max tire size you can get away with is 24 5/8" tall. Any more than that and you hit the frame gusset on the fire wall on an NA and the upper fender support just rear of the head light on an NB. Both parts are not able to be cleared by rasing the car and both are major structural components of the chassis that short of building a tube frame and can not be modified very much and keep the integrity of the car.

You have a bit more room in the back but anything over 25 1/2” tall hits the front of the wheel well at the rocker. The rocker would be no biggie to modify but my plan all along was to run the same size on all 4 corners so it was irrelevant.

So take that 24 1/2 max tire height over to tire rack and start hunting and you will soon be very discouraged. It doesn't matter if you swap to 5 lugs or go to 16,17 or 18” wheels you are stuck with that height restriction and wide sub 24 1/2" street tires just don’t exist.

That being said there is one significant advantages to going to 17s IMO. We are losing 15” tires all the time as the auto industry continues to move to larger lower profile tires. So as long as BMWs, Minis and NCs have wide low profile 17” tires on them we will have a good supply of options for us too.

But to answer your question IMO the best tire for a V8 Miata is a 285/30-18. that is 24.6 tall and gives you nearly 11" of rubber on the ground. There is one 18x10 4x100 wheel that is not too bad out there. The reason I did not go with this set up is I was trying to cut annual tire costs and 18s would not do that. But I would love to have that much rubber on the ground!

Nice work!
 

Nice work jim looking good. I like the wide body look on the NA.
I am collecting parts to put a ls motor in my 92. Can you tell me what front bumper and spoiler is on your car I like the looks out and need a new bumper on my car.
You. Mention the 285 tire on an na what offset will be needed to make that clear every thing. I defiantly will be doing a 5 lug conversion, I come from old school hot rods and the 5 lugs are a requirement for me.
We do a lot of metal work at the shop where I do my work so I am going to attempt them in metal , but may end up biting the bullet and going fiberglass.

Hi Robert! OK I think you set the record for low post count with just 2 in 3 years!

The front bumper is stock and kind of a mess really. The spoiler is a cheap $40 deal from ebay. There is a guy on Clubroadster that has a good deal on them too. I've had it on there twice now and have not really liked it either time. Not sure how long I am going to leave it or what I can do to - well fix it. Just looks weird to be so far off the ground to me but I have a steep drive way so can't go any lower.

Yeah I felt the same way about 5 lugs which is way I have 5 spoke wheels but thought it really was not worth the effort to convert to the 5 lug. The ideal offset is +36 for an NA but that number goes out the window when you convert to 5 lug or get wider than 9" wheels. Mine in the shots above are +25 which is far from ideal for what I do with the car. The scrub radius at +25 is far enough out of whack to adversely effect handling and I'm a corner kind of guy.

Are you talking about flares here? If so DO NOT do what I did to make them! If I was going to do it again I'd buy an English wheel and a lot of 22 gauge to learn how to use it then do them all in steel. That would be fun!

Welcome back I hope to see you around again before 3 years go by!

SUCCESS! Not a rub anywhere on the flares! I just may drop the car a little to see how much I can get away with... :D

Yea I know I got busy with other projects I had to finish before I started this. But I could not wait any longer.
I was talking doing my flails in steel I have a complete metal shop including an English wheel a plain shine hammer and a p9 pullmax I just.got to make the time to work on it. I love the metal work as much as buying toys. I think the front spoiler looks good.by the way
I'll try to post more and start a build thread when I get past the collecting parts stage.

I wish I was still in school. I had access to a nice machine shop in college, it was a blast. I spent a ton of time there doing oddball stuff, and a lot of time doing 3d modeling of parts. Don't have a place like that to use anymore. The real world sucks sometimes, gotta make the money, pay the bills :-)

You should throw some photos up of your shop some time. Sounds like a fun place.

I know this thread was about the wheels,and tires so when I get started putting every thing togather I'll put up some pictures. But in the mean time I would like to see more pictures of wide tires on some na's

,

Sorry man you are not going to find any photos of wide tires on NAs. Other than race rubber no tire company makes a tire wider than 225 that is short enough to fit a Miata. It just doesn't exist.

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P245/45ZR16 on the rear.

I guess I was thinking wider than 245 but if you want shots like that I have a ton of them. Just not with me on the road...
http://i61.tinypic.com/qnv37k.jpg

http://i1114.photobucket.com/albums/...ps22d0d555.jpg

Not sure what the tire size is on the above shots but these below I know are 275s on 15x10
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But most of these are race rubber that wouldn't live 5000 miles on the street...

That yellow car is over the top. Love them all though, good shots.

Are those Tuckin 99 Flares on the first black car? I really, really am liking these. I want to see them on an NB, but I think I'm going with those. I saw a photo of a gents red car earlier and it looks very good with them painted. originally I was thinking of doing unpainted flares as its not so bad. These look amazing body color matched. That and rivnuts = perfect.

A couple more shots of mine
http://i58.tinypic.com/dewv9i.jpg
http://i61.tinypic.com/8ywe9t.jpg

Note the cone on the way down... LOL!