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tires/wheels

body build updates chassis suspension tires/wheels

03

Jul

Body to chassis work..

Just wanted to toss up some pictures of the front-end stance (top row) some folks on ShopTalkForums wanted profile shots.  These aren’t full profile but it’s all we have at the moment.

The first picture is the result of the initial body to chassis merge.  I wanted to see if we could go lower.  Kevin then tweaked the suspension to drop the front a bit more.    I keep forgetting that these are 17 inch wheels – and as pictured, no rubbing, lock to lock! Trying to find the optimal mix between aesthetics and performance.

Ghias have narrow rear wheel wells.  So on the rear we rolled the fenders a bit to comfortably fit the 205s, but now we can (and will, eventually) go to 215s with no problem.

 

build updates performance tires/wheels

18

Jan

Preview of the wheels..

By chance I ran across some decent wheels.  I was looking for some steel rollers to get the car moving as my first choice of wheels had a 3 month lead time for delivery.  We needed something temporary to get the fitment right.  The wheels are the “Bullit” style from a Ford Mustang (oh the blasphemy!) but they have grown on me and the offset is damn near perfect for the Mendeola suspension.   I got the complete set off eBay for 1/7th of the price of the RE30s I was looking at. Dimensions are 17×8 with an offset of around 42mm.  We’re going to roll the rear fenders a bit and maybe the front.

Here’s a mockup of the final car with the Bullit wheels.

Here is the car with wheels like set in place (not fully fitted just yet).

Ford Mustang Bullit wheels (rear) on the Bullit Ghia.

Ford Mustang Bullit wheels (rear) on the “Bullit” Ghia.

Ford Mustang Bullit wheels. 17x8s all the way around.

Ford Mustang Bullit wheels. 17x8s all the way around.

chassis tires/wheels

10

Nov

Tire/wheel sizing tool.

The whole tire/wheel sizing thing got to be real complicated for this build.  At this point we’re looking at a set of 18 inch wheels and needed to do some preliminary sizing work.    So, after an hour or so tinkering around in Excel we came up with the attached tire/wheel sizing calculator tool.   You can put in a target size at the top and then try to “solve” for your tire/wheel combination.   So we’ve got the rough dimension work out of the way but we’re still going to need to determine our optimal offsets and such.

We’ve uploaded the tool so that others can use it for testing.   Here’s a screenshot of what it looks like (click the graphic to download):

Tire-sizing-sheet Tire/wheel sizing calculator (Excel).

This could help some other build projects out there.  If you find it useful, let us know and we’ll link to your project!

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