Handling with rims

[2.2vtec]

A friend was telling me that if I go with bigger rims on my lude it will affect handling in a negative way. He said that your steering goes weird and it hugs every imperfection in the road causing unexpected steering to the right or left. Is this true? I was wanting 18" rims but think i might just stick to 17"

[[GaGe]]

bigger wheels are better around corners. smaller wheels are better on the straight. i'm not sure about the weird handling though. i haven't read anything that says that.

[kenny]

There are other factors that play a part as well, for example, on my car, the staggered wheel size setup (wider in the rear) and 18" wheels results in increased "tramlining" where your car veers left or right based on the road. On roads with lots of truck traffic, I literally have to fight to keep my car going straight.

Some tires are worse than others as well from what I can tell, or it could be tire pressure.

However, generally speaking, larger wheels does increase this effect that your friend is talking about. Corning ability however is increased assuming you are on the same tires.

[FiveFreshFish]

Going to a larger rim will usually result in a wider rim too. To keep the tire from sticking out past the fender, the rim will usually have a different offset than the stock wheel. The centre line of the wheel is no longer the same as the stock wheel which means your steering geometry has changed.

Lowering a car will further change steering geometry and you'll notice it more if the car has no power steering to absorb some of the feedback.

[sexualbanana]

yeah, when u go on a road where trucks have put huge grooves in the road, u fight quite a bit because the wheels jerks left and right

[Fuji]

You get a lot of bump steer too! but I would still do it!

[schlong8]

The greater "tramlining" of the car to the road is mainly due to the TIRE, and not the RIM. Usually when people get larger rims, they go w/ a high performance tire. With increased performance the sidewall stiffness of the tire increases to resist flexing or folding when cornering.

So when u are travelling on the road w/ a lot of imperfections, the tire will not flex and contour itself to the road b/c it has a stiffer sidewall and more solid construction and thus track the road imperfections more.

The same effect can be similated somewhat by increasing the tire pressures in lower performance tires.......but it won't make a large effect compared to a different tire itself.

When i switched to the Falken Azenis w/ the same rims, the difference was amazing, and i had to pay constant attention to the steering b/c it would react to every little bump in the road.

[shadowz]

Mine handles very well with the larger wheel, but on the straight it is much slower than a 15 inch RIM, but you can make your stock 15 inch wheel handle well with a wider tire made from a softer compund

[ninjak84]

My rims are wider, so they handle really great since they are 17"s.
But keep in mind, and car with 19" rims will accelerate slower than the same car with 14" rims.

[Weapon_R]

Originally posted by schlong8
The greater "tramlining" of the car to the road is mainly due to the TIRE, and not the RIM. Usually when people get larger rims, they go w/ a high performance tire. With increased performance the sidewall stiffness of the tire increases to resist flexing or folding when cornering.


True that - its not the rim that causes tramlining, it is the combination of rim and tire, mostly due to the tire. I noticed this when switching different brands of tires. I've noticed that my present tires make driving on shitty roads very tough - it almost feels like the steering rack is gone...