just curious... what are some drawbacks for putting too much width in the front?

heard everything from ruining the handling to horrible handling in rain.

the latter makes sense to me; however, the first one doesn't. is there anything else?

 

I can't think of any drawbacks

 

Rubbing the fenders?

 

1. Gas mileage.
2. Throw all kinds of **** on the side of your car when its rainning or when the road is
wet.

 

as long as the offset and fit are correct. none...

beers

 

I can think of anything either!
I guess as long as the fronts are not wider then the rears then its fine!

 

you can ruin the handling if you stagger. i know, cuz i'm staggered.

 

Que?

 

1. Gas mileage.
2. Throw all kinds of **** on the side of your car when its rainning or when the road is wet.
3. Slower steering response.
4. More $$ for tires
5. Extra weight --> slower acceleration, harder to stop the car, extra wear on shock, etc.
6. Adding rubber in the front doesn't really improve anything unless your adding a LOT of horsepower.

The 8 has a tendancy towards oversteer anyway so going stagger actually improves things a bit. Of course it helps to have adjustable suspension.

 

sorry to get off topic a bit, but would a +30 offset fit well on the 8?

 

how wide of a wheel?

 

Tires will probably run you a pretty penny.

 

your GF is a liar; wider is better

 

Bigger tires = greater rolling resistance. = less gas mileage by a little bit. Not to mention the added weight. But if you were going to add weight anywhere in the suspension I suppose getting a heavy awesome tire would be loads better than getting heavy rims that do nothing but look good.

 

i am really sure gas mileage is not going to be an issue on this car!!!!!!!

beers

 

Slower steering response is not true, you can't base that simply on the fact that the tires are wider.

You have to watch out for the offset of the wheel. A lot of the time what you're doing when you're straying the offset from stock is that you're moving the point at which the force is applied at the contact patch relative to your upright's actual steering axis. That changes the leverage the tire has on your steering tie rods and essentially your steering effort and possibly the feedback you get from it. There's a lot of things going on. You want to look at what the restoring moment in the Z axis of the tire is vs where your steering link is and what your steering ratio is. (I know some of this information isn't exactly readily available).

In a nut shell, going too wide can just make the car more difficult to drive despite the increased performance. This is the reason why I believe front wheel drive cars can't go any wider, there's not reason (barring clearance issues, which if you're insane enough then it doesn't matter) why you can't try bolting on a 275 at the front of a high hp FF car, but it's probably not exactly drivable.

I believe wider tires have been known to tramline in the ruts of the highway more.

How much wider are you thinking anyway?

Considering tires only (as in not while the tire is on the car): given all other factors equal, a wider tire will always give you more grip. I have never seen other wise on any slip angle vs. lateral force charts.

 

You pretty much answered the steering responce question when saying "Going to wide can make the car difficult to drive." Our electric power steering aint the greatest, you gotta amit that. Now lighter front tires/narrow/wheels= quicker responce.

I might be wrong on this one but I could remember reading here at least one or two 8 owneres did use 275 on their front & rear wheels.

FWD, I know of a few guys who use 275's on their front wheels(Maxima guys)

 

Steering response isn't a function of the rate at which you can change the angle of the wheel (not the steering wheel). I did say that you can't simply base it on the width of the tire, I left it open to other things.

What I mean primarily by "difficult to drive" is when you have a Z restoring moment that out powers your arms or possibly cause terrible feedback.

Steering response is primarily a function of slip angle and lateral force generated. The greater the slope when graphing this on an X and Y axis, the greater the steering response of a tire.

I'm linking two graphs.

http://picasaweb.google.com/Leon.Cheung/TireGraphs

You can see in these graphs that a 7.0 in. tire essentially has better response (and note, better ultimate grip) than a 6.5 in. tire. It's minor, but also realize the normal force on these tires in this graph is 250 lb. These numbers were used for design around a 600 lb (w/ driver) car.

 

i think my car handles fine!
and im running 18X10 all around

 

Wow, that must be pretty cool. Do the tires rub at that size? So you run 245s?

 

OK so its a theoretical thing and a small one at that

 

thanks for the responses. i was thinking 18x10.5 +45mm offset all the way around like teamrx8's setup. 285/40/18 all around.

that's after i get out of my bankruptcy

seems like the consensus is that as long as they fit, the wider the better for rx8's.

 

 

^^ please, this is NOT the place to be posting your GF pics

 

In the 2nd pic, shes drinking a Diet Coke!!! lol