trigger06

I was looking into getting a new set of wheels and tires for my car. I'm currently running the stock 17x8's with the stock pirellis (sp?). Anyway, I was looking at either a 17x9 or 18x9. I would like something wide, but fairly light. Other than allowing me to fit larger brake rotors, what are the advantages of the 18s? Also, what size tires would work best with each rim? I was looking at the potenza re01s. Any comments about this tire? I've only heard good things. Can you recommend a tire with similar performance? I would like to get firestone/bridgestone tires because I get a 35% discount (dad works for them), but I am by no means dead set on that. I'd pay a bit more for performance. Thanks!

Argonaut

I'll give you my 2 cents: I have three sets of rims: stock 17X8, lt weight 5Zigen's in 17x9 (used for autoX and track), heavy wt American Muscle 18x9s.

What you should do depends on your intended usage. I have the light weight 17x9s because a) they are lighter and b) competition tires are quite a bit cheaper in 17in. But the drawbacks are big: there are very few tires available for this rim (not any I'd want) to get you to the stock diameter of ~27". This means I have big gaps between the fender and tire and the car sits really low, too low for much street driving with the Eibach pro springs.

I like the 18x9s much better for street driving. They are a bit heavier but make up for it in available tires that fill the wheel wells - 255/45/18 and bigger. They look much better.

You can read reviews of the RE01 on TireRack.com

F1Fan

Hi trigger06,

There is nothing wrong with 17" wheels except that there are veryfew real highperformance tires available in the right size for a 17"x9" wheel. Theonly big advantage of 18" wheels is that youhave a ton of great tires available in terms of high performance and high performance all-season tires. Don't laugh, the best ultra high-performance all-season tires are just as fast or faster on a dry track as most dry/summerultra high-performancetires and they aremiles ahead in terms of cold and wet weather performance. CombinetheUHP all-seasontire catagory'sgenerally better ride, generally more predictable breakaway handling at the limit and 50-100% more tread life and they are abetter choice for a high-performance daily driver than most of the dry/summer UHP catagory tires. UHP all-season tires do give up some steering response and can feel greasy but the trade off is nottoo bad if you keep yourtire sizes at thenarrowerendand the wheels at the wideend of the usable width range for a given size tire.

Additional advantages of18" and largerwheelsinclude:taller wheelsgive youshorter more responsive sidewalls on your tires,larger brakerotors can befitted if you feel the need for larger rotorsand if you have lowered youryou can improve your front roll center height withSteeda X5 ball joints. Relaize that if you start to corect your suspension geometry by moving the ends of your control arm mounting points you will also need to correct for bumpsteer error using a bumpsteer kit from Steeda or Baer but this is a good thing for your steering.

But of course there are some serious down sidesto going to18" or larger wheels the two main issues being much higher cost of tires and increasedrotatingand unsprung masses.This is an issue because the extra rotating mass slows you down some small amount all the time and costs you in brake pad material, horsepower and fuel. But the losses are small if you arecareful about keepingwheel weights low.

The ideal size for astreet S197 Mustang on 17" wheelsare 255/50x17 tires. These will fit your stock wheels perfectly and are not too wide toget good support for the tread and sidewalls so you will still have decent handling feel and steering response. This is the only real upgrade in terms of tire size that will fit your stock 17"x8"wheels and not make your car look like it's up on stilts. Whatever you do don't buy tires that are shorted than 27" tall, the car will look evenworse than itdoes stock if you have not yetloweredyour car. A 17"x9" wheel with the right offset and a set of good summer performance tires in 255/50x17 on the stock Bullitts is really plenty of tire and is a lot of fun for a decent driver. You have just enough grip to play with the throttle to blance the car in slow to moderate speed turns and you will have a very good ride due to the tall side walls. You can also easily go to an 18"x8.5",9.0" or 9.5"wheel and use a 255/45x18 tire and get improved steering response as you gowider on the wheelsand still have a pretty light wheel and tire combination.

Light wheels are a real treat but lightweight race wheels are not really ideally suitedfor realworld street use if you have a lot of potholes orrough roads in your area. Surprisingly the stock 17" Bullitts are reasonably light and meet OEstrength and impact requirements. Very few of the really light track orientedwheels are this strong. A good indicator of quality is T.U.V. certification. If you can find a lightweight wheel in the right size and offset that meets T.U.V. requirements buy it otherwise keep looking. JIS isthe weak sister of the T.U.V. certification and not a strong indicator of strength and durability. Be realistic in your wheel weight goals you do get better performance out them and improved ride but really only if you have adjustable dampers to take advantage of the reduced wheel mass.

As far as Bridgestone/Firestone tires go IMO there are better tires in the proper sizes you need. Goodyear, Michelin, Pirelli, BFG,Yokohama all make excellent tires inthe right 17", 18", 19" and20"size ranges for the S197 chassis.

HTH!

Poco

The smoothest ride I've experience were from 255/45/18 Nitto 555's on a set of 18x9(40mm offset) rims(Redlines) which I should have kept.
But I had ordered 20's.My wife is buying me the set for our 30th wedding anniversary today.

jayel579

F1Fan-

You are almost always right but I have to disagree withyouwith this statement. A 17x9" wheel is the stock wheel size of a C4 corvette.A 275/40-17 sized tire came on that car I believe and there are tons of high performance tires available in that size. Don't a lot of the SN-95 guys run this size also? There are so many C4 corvettes on the road and the price of that size tire tends to be a little lower then most. 18" high performance tires tend to be on the expensive side. I run this size tire on my track wheels.

F1Fan

Hi jayel579,

LOL! I've been wrong plenty of times, just ask my wife!But if you step back and look atwhat is out there and where we've been and where we appear to be headed you might change your mind.

Well sure there are lots of good tires out there with 17" holes in the middle of them. But the catch is finding a perfromance tire with that 17" hole that is also27"+ tallwhich is the requirement to keep your S197's very large wheel wells from looking like an autocrossers weekend toy and changing important suspension geometry specs. Usinga shorter than stock wheel and tire combination also changes your chassis'roll centers which you will discover changes your cars handling.This often comes as a surpriseto people but there is a lot in play with suspension and tire height is one of them.If you wanted to buy a dedicated track tire there are plenty of very good tires in the 275 rangethat are 25"-26" tallout there but theymay not give you the best setup and can lookpretty sillyin the S197's huge fenderarches.Additonally tires in this widthalso need a 10" wide wheel or they will steer and handle like mush. So it's pretty much is likeIposted,for a good high performance street tire using a 7"x9" wheel the options are very limited.

Regarding the sales of tires there are strong market forces working against us here.Asa particular popular performance tire modeland sizes gets older they tendto go down in price relative to the market.So with the automotivefashion trend being towards larger wheels and tires (never mind the performance loss this causes)the 14", 15", 16" and now even 17" tires have all in their turn significantly fallen in price.Of coursewe have yet to see an inexpensive truly state of the art high performance tire for the same reasons. As the performance trends moves around in size thelast generation high performance tires are nolonger competitive in terms of tire performance factors (grip, wear, handling, ride, noiseetc.)anddrop in price.For example look at theoriginal BFG T/A's and Goodyear EagleF1 tires, theyare completely out classed by even the most modest modern all-season performance tires today and were first heavily discounted and thendiscontinued long ago. Hmm, this sounds a lot like the value of supermodels and Ferrari 308'sdoesn't it? LOL!

HTH!

trigger06

Thanks for the response F1Fan! My car is currently my daily driver and stock. I would like to build it up for better all around performance. I plan to take it to the track (both drag and autocross) every now and then. But track trips will likely be uncommon. Maybe once a month or every other month. Sounds to me like you are recommending that I should get a lightweight 18x9 wheel with a 255/45/18 UHP all season tire. Any tire in particular that you recommend? What would you consider to be lightweight? What rim/tire combo do you run? Thanks!

kcmarti

P255/45ZR18
(1) Michelin Pilot Sport A/S
(2) BF Goodrich gForce SuperSport A/S

F1Fan

Hi trigger06,

Will you be installing any suspension upgrades? Are you limited by any sort of class rules? Would you consider a nice set of good looking street wheels with good DDtireswith a more specializedset of drag tires for the rear sitting in the garage for drag duty?Or are you going to use the same tires for alluses? Are the roads you drive on smooth, rough, bumpy, cold, snowy, rainy, hot, dry? All things to consider if you are going to have one set of tires to do it all.

You alsohave to carefully consider what you are most likely to be doing most of the time and realize that you can'tget the same things considered important for street dutyout of a set of DOT race tires and the inverse is also true.This is why so many people in the USofAwho can afford it frequently have dedicated winter tires and deicate summer tires mounted on wheels that are appropriate for thejob. It's alsobeen my experience even here in sunny SoCalpeople are frequently better off with anUHP all season tire than a dedicated summer performance tire. Summer tires are noisy, ride poorly and tend to wear funny if they are driven alot intemps below 50F or so. On the other handsummer drytires are incredible in the summer and on clean dry orwet pavement but let it get cold and you can go skittering off the road in a hurry.This seems to be a trait ofalmost all of the summer performance tires but a lot of theUHP tires are going this way too and the only tires as a group that seem to work when temps start to fall are all-season tires. The interesting thing about the latestall-season tires is that they are inheriting a lot of the UHP tire construction details so they are frequently as fast or faster than most of thelast generation UHP and dry sumer tires and have the advantage that they work in cool weather and wear like iron.

For an S197street car18"x9" wheels are a great choice due to the huge number of really good performance tires appropriate forthe car in the rigth 255/45x18 size.IMO a reasonably light 18"x9" street wheel in this size would be in the 25-30lb. range. Any lighter and youmay have a hard time keeping them round on potholed or rough street surfaces.There are maybe 25 tires tochoose from and IMO any one of about10 will make you pretty happy pretty much mostof the time. It's when you are on the edges of a particular tire'scapabilites that people are unhappy or in a ditch. For aDD street car the UHP all-season tires are a good choice if you don't want to compromise your ride and noise as much as a dry summer tire will. These newer all-season tires are pretty goodbut not really any less money than the summer tires in the same sizes but like I mentioned also can be just as fast as most of the summer tires out there and they last a heck of a lot longer. In order Ilike the newestYokohama S.4, Goodyear EagleF1 andBFG g/Force Super Sport UHPall-season tires best followed bylast generation Michelin Pilot Sport A/S and Pirelli PZero NeroM+S tires. The lastgen A/S tires are not far behindbut therehave been improvements in grip and especiallyNVH. In summer tires in order of prefrence I like the Goodyear Eagle F1 GS D3, BFG g/Force KDW2, Pirelli PZero Rosso, Michelin Pilot Sport, Goodyear Eagle F1 Supercar though some people have not liked them. I have not driven on them but there is a bit of a fuss over General's Exclaim UHP by a lot of the Grassroots Racing people.

Personally I have been enjoying a set of BFG g/Force T/A KD tires mounted on a set of 18"x10" forged Roush alloys I got fromGAS (Galpin Auto Sports)who is the big localRoush dealership here in SoCal. They took them off a new Roush Stage3 car before delivery. The forgedalloy Roush wheels were reasonably light and very, veryshiny but really not my cup of tea due to the blinding mirror polish they put on the wheels before applying the chrome finish. I mean BLINDING! While this setup was amazing as long as the weather was warm, wet or dry the chrome was an issue for me on my Mineral Gray car. So I sold them to a friend of mine with aRoush and I expect they look awesome on his blackRoush. I hadthis set ofSaleen PJ Edition 302 wheels (19"x9" ET30frontand 19"x10" ET50rear)sitting out in my garage for the lastfew months waiting for a set of Yokohama S.4's to show up but with the opportunity to sell the Roushwheels and tires I stuck a set of the new Goodyear Eagle F1 A/S tires on them and threw them onthe car in the garage. They work pretty well but lack the steering response of the 1" shorter BFG g/Force T/A KD tires. This is partly my fault as I wanted to get a set of tires ASAP and to fillthe wheelwells as much as possibleso rather than usea 275/35x19 in front as Saleen does on this Trans-Am styled 19"x9" wheelI went with the standard Saleen PJ Edition rear tire size of 275/40x19 all around. But with an extra 5-8psi of air they come around pretty well though I don't know what happens to the grip or wear at this elevated tire pressure yet.

HTH!

Argonaut

Hi trigger,

Light weight and still affordable is in the 17-20 lb area. 5Zigen and Enkei make several models that fit the bill - Enkei RPF1 18x9 = 18.4lbs and costs ~ $330. Anything under ~25 lbs is pretty light, so that gives you lots of choices. Unfortunately most Dealers sites do not advertise their wts. An exception to this is edgeracing.com. Or you can pick up a copy of "Grassroots Motosports" magazine (http://grassrootsmotorsports.com) or SCCA's 'SportsCar' magazine - they usually have advertisements in them which actually show wheel weights.