Banpei's two door panda Trueno from Japan

[Ivan141]

Well, a wheel rack might not be a strange idea in that case.

I might have a pair of meshies to complement those Impuls of yours if you're interested. (RSST Super Silhouette 14x7)

[banpei]

Today I moved all the stuff from the old garage box to the new one.
Old:

New:

As you can see, I just built the same design shelf as before. I had time constraints and needed to just place all my stuff, and I'll build a new shelf in the future. I have some leftovers as I made it less deep, and I'll use that to build a nice wheel rack.

@Ivan: thanks for the offer, but today I picked up this package that had arrived from Japan:

I was expecting one wheel as I thought I had bought a pair, and they sent me two boxes. But more about that later.

To my surprise, there were two wheels inside the box:


It's a pair of 7.5 wide SSR Formula Mesh Type B:

This means they have an offset of +6

My original plan was to pair them with the Impul Pro Mesh wheels like this:

6.5 +11 up front and 7.5 +6 at the rear wheels. The idea was to paint the Pro Mesh wheels silver to match the silver paint scheme of the SSR wheels.

However, the whole wheel purchase was a bit of a weird story. I won this auction, and I was under the impression this was a pair of wheels. Everything was shipped to Buyee and Buyee received two boxes, but then decided to split them into two separate shipments. So I sent off the shipment right under the auction, due to the weight, thinking they had sent the pair of wheels together. One month later, I got a notice from Buyee that there was still one package in their warehouse, which was odd. So I had that shipped as well, under the impression they did send the two wheels separately. Hence, my surprise there were two wheels in the box!

Looking back at the auction, it doesn't mention the number of wheels anywhere. There are only two photo's and they look very much alike:


But upon closer inspection, they are actually four wheels with different damages. That means I got four wheels for the price of two!
I assume the others are also 7.5 +6, so that would make a nearly ideal set for the AE86!

They are in rough condition, so I will need to polish the lips and see how well they come up. The centres are in need of a repaint, so I'll have to do that as well.

[Koen]

Haha, that's a great surprise! The specs look great for an AE86! the big lip with the reasonable ET should make them a good fit I have them in 14x7 -5 but that might be a bit too much for the front (without modifying the arches)

[banpei]

I have to see if the fronts aren't too wide. Some time ago, I took some not-so-scientific measurements of my current wheels, and this is the gap I have to bridge:

32mm at the front and 41mm at the rear

My current wheels are 6.5 +25 (front) and 6.5 +15 (rear). If I calculate the change to the 7.5 +6, it would mean the new wheels would extend 28mm outward at the rear and 38mm at the front. As my measurements were haphazardly done, it could be the case didn't centre the plastic box properly, and it could change a few millimetres in the end. So, I have to mount the SSR wheel and see if it pokes out too far or not.

[Koen]

I think you're calculation is wrong by a few mm ..

The ET is measured from the center. So your rim is 1/2" wider to each side (7.5 - 6.5" /2) which is about 13mm. Then you move the center 19mm further inwards (25-6mm) so the total extra "poke" would be 32mm which is what you measured If you fit the same tires the tire-stretch would also help you with clearance.

You even need a spacer in the rear if you want them to sit in similar position to the arch as it's 22mm in the rear and you have 41mm of room. But my experience is that the solid rear axle doesn't make it easy to run flush fitments as the axle moves left to right and doesn't camber in under suspension compression. This is probably why people like the incredibly solid springs for the AE86. Then the suspension won't move and you can run great fitment

And I believe your car is lowered a bit so the length of the panhard also has impact. If this is stock, this usually means that left and right are now different so you need an adjustable panhard rod.

I would just start with trying to fit them and see what happens

[banpei]

Thanks for those calculations!
I think you're right. I didn't calculate it myself as I'm too lazy for that. I usually use the wheel offset calculator or willtheyfit to do this. When I wrote the above, I used the wheel offset calculator. When I perform the same calculations on willtheyfit, I get the same results as you calculated.

My plan is to use slightly wider tyres than I currently have, as I don't like them overly stretched. However, I found out 195/60 is about the widest tyre available in the Netherlands for 14-inch wheels. I can find them in wider sizes, but then they tend to be extremely expensive.

My car is, as far as I know, not lowered. I do have plans to lower it, but those springs only lower something like 20mm. For the Panhard rod that should be fine. I'll fit the wheels to the car when I get the chance and see how much it will poke out.

--- Edit ---
Tonight I moved the AE86 into its new home:

I still need to find the reference points on how to park tighter to the wall. Apart from the garage door that is way smaller, the garage feels much more spacious!

I still have plenty of room at the rear:

That one meter extra space really makes a difference!

[banpei]

I measured the wheels at the front and rear.

The good news is that the rear is only 5 or 6 millimetres from the arch, so near perfect fitment.


The bad news is that the front is clearly poking out from the front fender:


The (unscientifically-measured) poke is about 15 millimetres to the widest part of the fender. This means the poke out to the flange is even bigger.


A little bit of poke out isn't bad if you stretch the tires enough or add more camber.


I don't have camber plates, but I don't think a few degrees of camber will fix that.
Which means, I'll have to revert to my original plan to team these up with the Hoshino Impul mesh wheels.

Which brings me to another subject, if I have to repaint the centres, which colour would be best? I asked some AI to put various SSR Formula mesh wheels on my car, and this is the result:

Just ignore they don't have the correct width and offset, which one would be better? With the panda-silver paint scheme, I'm inclined to say the black centres would be the best. However, I also dig the gold wheels as that matches up with the Dutch yellow license plates.

[Koen]

That might be a bit too much in the front for stock arches I think your car is too clean to roll them ..

About the color of the centers; anything but black (or something dark) the 'flower-like' design what I love about the SSR mesh completely disappears when you choose a dark color.

I would go silver, but I'm biased because I have a silver panda car and bought SSR formula mesh with silver centers for that car ... maybe I can take that car out of storage this weekend and show you how it wil look.

[Ivan141]

I agree with Koen here, black would be a crime with those wheels. Some silver thats close to the body colour might work as an alternative.

[banpei]

Thanks for the feedback!

I was able to get another image generated and this time I asked for gunmetal grey versus body colour versus gold:

I don't like the grey, but the body colour looks much better than the earlier attempt with the light silver.
I'm still fond of the gold wheels, and I haven't made up my mind yet. I'll just let it sink in and think about it in the upcoming weeks.

In other news, the old garage box is now completely empty:

I have been renting this place since 2013, and that's the longest time in my life that I've ever been at the same spot. So far, the longest I've lived in the same place was just shy of 10 years, so my garage box beat me to it!