Lowering and wheel set up.
 

Hey guys, I'm pretty new here, and also new to modifying cars.

My question here, is I'm looking to drop my car about 2.5 to 3 inches. The issue is, I'm having trouble understanding the offset needed. If there's anyone who has done a similar drop and has used 17x8 wheels, I'd love your input.

Or, if someone can explain offset, and pairing wheels to a drop in simple terms, that would be even better.

Apologies in advance for my lack of searching, but I read the sticky and am having trouble wrapping my brain around it.

positive moves wheel inward
negative moves wheel outward
2.5-3inches lower is a lot for a car that has 5inches of clearance to begin with. prepare for much scrapage, getting stuck, and having nightmares of potholes and speedbumps. and looking cool!(or not)

search google for wheel offset calculator so you can see how it works.

This might help you understand offset a little better

http://kgm.tiwing.com/calcs/img/offsetdiagram1.jpg

@lukey86 so basically offset refers to the position of where the wheel is bolting up to the hub? That graphic definitely helped, only thing I'm still wondering about is on the graphic, the hub is on the right side of the wheels?

So in the image the hub face, or the part of the hub that connects to the car is on the left....the more you reduce the offset, the more the rim will poke out, or the more aggressive the wheel will become, most standard wheels are about +48 or so..on an frs/brz the offset is reduced to around +30 or so to make an 8.75 inch wheel flush, so basically the less offset the more aggressive the wheel

There's a few calculators around where you can figure this out by measuring the clearance from the rim to the inside of the fender and using the std rim as a benchmark and entering different width and offset combinations to give you an idea of how much clearance your new wheels will have


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Cheers @lukey86 I ended up going with a set of wheels that are 16x8 +25

Which wheels? The idea of 16's is starting to become very appealing to me.

@BRZ_Fern the Enkei Compe's

Have you tired using this tool?

This is an auto fitment calculator, you can change offset, tire size, wheel width, height, camber, etc.

It shows users who have confirmed fitment as well.

http://www.frsproject.com/tire_size.php

I played around with it, but again, I couldn't quite understand it

It takes a bit of time, but it's really easy once you understand it. When you play around with the settings, you'll see the lines at the top move up or down (essentially this is the car chassis and the fenders) changing offset will move the wheel closer or further from the hub center, changing the width of the wheel will increase the size of the wheel barrel (which you can observe) best thing to do is leave one side with stock measurements, and play with one setting to see how it compares to stock, then go ahead and change the other setting. You can choose staggered, and different tire sizes, some tire sizes on larger wheels will get close to stock diameter which you want so that your speedo doesn't get thrown off.

Do you know how to read what is on a tire also? It helps to understand the numbers and what they mean. For instance the difference between a 215/45/R17 or a 235/40/R18, etc.

The lower you go, the more tendency for the tires to appear "sucked in" to the car, therefore, changing offset to a smaller number will help bring the wheel closer to the fender, instead of further into the body of the car.

for instance +48 vs. +38 the +38 will look better once you start lowering the car.

With stock tire size (which can easily be put on a 17x8 wheel with no issues, check the tire manufacturers website, because some tires have a range to which they are acceptable fit on a wheel without stretching) a +30 or +35 Offset with 2" drop would look nice. You'd still have a little bit of suck inward, but nothing too bad. At that wheel/tire size, you may not even need any camber to make it fit. With coilovers it would easily clear.