Notice in the picture below, the rear wheel has a slightly deeper setting than the front. I'm wondering what the most optimal setup would be for the 8.

Is it possible to have both the front and rear wheels with that deep dish look?

What is the widest wheel one could get for the 8? front? rear?

 

There is no "optimal" staggered setup for the 8.. The optimal setup for the stock suspension design are the stock tire and wheel sizes/offset.

 

The car understeers with the stock setup. I would not suggest larger tires in the rear because it will just make the understeer worse.

 

18 or 19?

 

19" Wheels:

8 front, 9 rear...
8.5 front, 9.5 rear (max)

Tires 225 front, 245 rear...
Largest tire should be 235 front 265 rear...

You can go larger as some have but you will have compromises and fitment issues...

 

You can go up to a 275/30 in the rear on a 9" rim if you can get a 48mm or greater offset.

Do the math:

The stock rim is 8" and a 50mm offset. The tire is a 225mm tread which is almost 9" and there is about 1" to 1.25" of lateral clearance to the rear wheel wells in the stock setup.
That means almost 60mm of total additional tire width that will fit with the offset remaining at 50mm.
A 275 tire is 2" wider than a 225, which means only 1" additional per side.

that said, I am using 235 in the front and 245 in the rear, both on 8" rims but with a +42mm offset in the front and a +30mm offset in the rear.

 

in the newest issue of sport compact car they test the JIC magic sponsored rx8. they ran it with a staggered setup and complained of horrible oversteer. it is becoming apparent that staggered setup is NOT beneficial to the 8.....the only reason you'd want it is to say you have a 'staggered wheel setup' but then i might laugh at you. the JIC guys towards the end of the testing went back to a normal, non-staggered setup and reported that almost all understeer was neutralized.

understeer=the enemy of fast lap times

 

"Optimal setup" is such a vague concept. This is not a swiss army knife so optimal for what? What's optimal for drag racing is not optimal for daily driving. Might as well ask what's the optimal style shirt to wear.
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AMATEUR ****

 

The optimal style shirt is comfortable and looks good enough to catch the eye of that barista you wink at every morning.

 

Smartalec. :D But the boss fired me because I wasn't wearing a tie and the shirt is way too casual for business attire. So it's not optimal.
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Big *****

 

But that is subjective as well. There are engineers who never see a customer, but have to wear a suit to work everyday. That is pointless. Just because someone says it's optimal doesn't make it optimal in a purely functional and logical sense.

 

My point was there is no one thing (shirt, wheel setup, whatever) that is optimal for everything. Without better context and definition of what is considered optimal (and why) the question is meaningless.
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LovelyWendie

 

I think that was the whole point...

"optimal" is subjective on several issues.


As to the article with the JIC car, no one mentioned what alignment settings it had. This can also be a factor in its driving characteristics. I have also noticed that the front springs on the FLTA2S is 60% stiffer than the rear and the FLTA2H is 43% stiffer than the rear. I'm not sure which was on the test car during testing, but this could also be a factor in its understeer.

 

JIC used the 10/7kg springs in that article. What alignment or rebound settings they used are unfortunately unknown as the owner is constantly fiddling with that.
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MARRIAGE ADVICE