Tires/Suspension ?

[TurfBurn]

I met some guys over this weekend that told me to talk to Jeff to see about what options there are for running 245 width tires on the Protege's. Any input you guys are willing to post regarding offsets required, fender rolling or trimming or whatever else would be great!

Thanks!

Steve

[xelderx]

I posted in your other thread as well. If it helps you I'm running 245 Kook street tires on 16X8 rims. Between Jeff and I we should be able to get you started. Just remember that both Jeff and myself are on 245 street tires. A 245 R'comp will be noticably wider.

[TurfBurn]

Great! I do appreciate the help very much so. It's too bad tires and wheels aren't something you can easily order, try out and return if it doesn't work. Would make experimenting so much easier.

I have a buddy that has an STi which is the same bolt pattern and he has some 245's on a 9" rim that we'll fit to my car and see what problems arise there. If THOSE fit then I'm sure the 8" will work for my needs. I'll mess around with a few things and see... just need to get more meat under the car than the 205's I run on now.

[iracemine]

so in order to run the 245s what backspacing do you need??

[xelderx]

so in order to run the 245s what backspacing do you need??

On a 16X8" rim the 245s will fit with around 50mm of offset or 6.5" on backspacing. That is dependent on struts though as some are thicker than others. It still requires some pretty aggressive work to the rear fenders depending on how low you want the car to be.

Someone else will have to chime in on the 17" rims as the added hieght causes more clearance issues.

[TurfBurn]

I'll post a how to and a show of what I'm doing once I get it all done... basically you have to set it up to tuck as tight to the strut as you can get... and that will depend a bit on which tire you choose to use... so what I'm doing is I took an offset that makes sure the rim clears the strut by a minimal margin and then will use spacers to weak out to where I need to be... cheaper than switching rims etc if you make a mistake... easy to start too close to the strut and move out than try to move back to the strut... so right now I have a 17x8 rim running a 42mm offset... but my offset seems to run about 5mm off from the rest of the guys because of the JIC's... so I'm not a great example really other than showing "how" to do it on the car physically for spacings... and I'm not done yet, so we'll see what problems I find yet.

[xelderx]

I had to grind a flatspot on my AWR struts so the tires would clear. It's not actually in the strut body, but I ground down the threaded collar.

You can just barely see it in this pic...

http://www.mazdas247.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=102134&d=1172939364

[Speed3.5]

nsn i want those spaces if you don't mind , reply my pm pls

end of threat jack :)