Quote:
Originally Posted by Stang70Fastback
You sound like you're making a whole lot of assumptions based on "intuition" without having much [if any] experience. In fact, I'm starting to suspect that you are a troll, but in good faith:
If you're honestly asking this question, then that can only mean that you're attempting to offer feedback and advice on a subject which you understand very little, if at all. Stock struts are much wider than aftermarket coilovers. You can only go so wide before you hit the spring perch. Yes, you can fit a 9" wide wheel on the stock suspension, but the tire will poke significantly from behind the fender, even on the highest offset you can fit. At that high offset, you will have ZERO room to add ANY amount of camber, and you need some camber if you want the car properly set up to take advantage of the wider tires and higher grip levels. You could mount a lower offset tire, but then you'll run into mexipoke issues, and you will also rub the insides of the fenders/firewall.
Coilovers allow you to add a higher offset wheel, which means no ugly poking wheel. The also allow you to add a few degrees of camber. Basically they eliminate the issues you run into with the stock suspension when fitting wider tires than stock.
I'm not sure if you are aware of this, but the stock 17x7 wheels are HEAVY because they are not optimized for weight. They are optimized for cost and mass-production. The stock 17x7 wheels weigh over 20 LBS. My 18x9 wheels weigh a hair LESS than the stock 17x7 wheels, and my 17x9 wheels that I use for autocross weigh several LBS less than the stock wheels. So again, it sounds like you're just making assumptions without actually doing any research.
You can say "it's hard to see how more power will be better" all you want, but unless you've actually tried it, what you are stating is just an opinion, and not fact. The fact is a car with 9" wide wheels will be faster around an autocross course than a car with 7" wide wheels. I'm not sure what power has to do with anything. We aren't talking about putting power down. No you don't need a wider tire to put the power down that this car generates. However, this is a MOMENTUM car. The whole point of this car is to carry speed through corners in order to make up for the power deficit. What's one way to carry more speed through a corner? A wider tire.
A larger diameter is purely for show. I will agree with you there. (It does improve the response time of the tire due to the shorter sidewall, but it generally isn't worth the trade-off for purely performance reasons on this car.) However, there are plenty of benefits to a WIDER tire. Just because you don't believe this doesn't make it untrue.
I'm not aware of any factory option packages that include 9" wide wheels. I know the Performance Package comes with 7.5" wide wheels (which is purely to clear the Brembo brakes, and not to improve handling), and I think the TRD wheels might have been 8" wide?
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I will disagree with your first point about wide wheels sticking out. I have 17x9 +35 wheels with 245/40 tires and have zero poke. -3* camber front, -2.5 (or maybe a bit less, can't remember what the max SPC LCAs give), but still zero poking tire. I have almost no clearance between tire and strut, but it's enough to not be worried about rubbing.
That is all, may edit when I finish reading your post.
Edit: I'm on S Tech springs. So around 1.5" lower than stock I think. The rest of your post I agree with