I just purchased a low mileage 99 FRC and love it. My only slight concern is that the beautiful brushed aluminum HRE 547 wheels that came with it are stock C5 sizes. 17x8.5 front and 18x9.5 rear. It currently has Michelin Pilot A/S ZP runflats. They are nice tires and basically brand new with only about 3k miles on them. To get some more traction though, I will probably upgrade to Michelin PS2 non-runflat tires. But, I will need to get 245/45/17 front and 275/40/18 rear sizes.
Here is my question, my old FRC had OEM Z06 wheels with the same Michelin PS2 tires, only in 265/40/17 and 295/35/18 sizes. Will I notice a major loss in traction with the smaller sized tires? Now, obviously, less contact patch = less traction, but will it really make the car that much worse around the twisties and with straight line accelleration? Is the difference big enough that it would be worth switching to less attractive (to me) Z06 wheels or saving up some cash to buy bigger HREs down the line? Also, the offset with these wheels is such they come out to the edge of the fender and don't "look" small and inset like the stock C5 wheels do. So I wouldn't need to buy bigger wheels for astetic purposes.
Well, you don't need to stay with the smaller rubber, many guys put the Z size rubber on stock sized rims and have no problems at all. That and the fact you are not getting traction no matter what size you run if you stay with a street tire with that HP. I would suggest the NittoRII in 275/285 if you want great cornering and traction too.
Last edited by ICaughtVetteFever; 02-25-2007 at 07:26 PM.
Go to tirerack and look at the size tires you want. Under the specifications section they will tell you what size rims go with that tire. While you can go with wider or narrower than the recommended rim width it does have an impact on the amount of tread that touches the ground, which is what counts for traction. There is a pretty good explanation of all this on the site.
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Do I really NEED wider rims and tires?
