Ace_Murdock

hello,

i am heading to a point in the restoration of my car where i need to start welding in metal to either fix, or reinforce the body from rust and to just make it stiffer. since my car is from the north i get to deal with rust, not too much, and nothing the MIG welder cant fix...yay for me

now with my car completely disassembled and up on jack stands i can now envision what i want to do.

my rear wheel wells need to be fixed, many of the places where the spot welds are, are becoming rusted. Easy fix, cut them off and place new sheet metal in with a different metod of attachment.

Now my problem..... the places where i am going to be cutting is in places where if i were to cut a bit more, and bring the inside most center wall closer to the subframe i can "mini tub" my car to fit bigger wheels. I can do this pretty easily. i am also going to roll the fenders to gain more room.

now here is the question, what points of the wheel wells do the tires like to rub on? the bump stop flange, the frame, the inner wheel well? can anybody please give me in order what i need to massage/get rid of/fix/make better so that i can fit some really wide meats in the back?

i will be using 17" rims, and i dont know how wide. i will probably be keeping the stock ride height in the back and lowering the front to get a slight rake. is it easier to fit wider wheels in the back if it were lowered because the bump stop bracket may be inside of the rim?

after doing some measurements of the wheel wells i think i can fit something like 14"-15" wide wheels with some creative custom fabrication.

can anybody please give me some info. i will post this on some other boards as well. sorry about taking up the bandwidth.

(BR)G-Machine

I was thinkning about this as well and I dont think that the sheepmetal is the real issue with upping the wheel and tire package: it is the lower control arm. I think that you would hit this before you would hit the sheepmetal or they are pretty close. So if you mini tubed the rear then you would have to re mount the lcas and springs which I would not recomend because it is easy to botch and there would be less leverage on the springs which would make for good launches but wouldnt get the same flex as before.

Are you doing this for aestics? I ask because there is bvery little benifet in terms of handling and traction. There is no more friction because the friction is a function on the weight on the wheels, not how much surface area there is on the contact patch. There are slight gains because there is more resistance to sway and twisting of the rear end. If you are doing it for aestics than right on! I think that a Camaro with 310+ rubbers on the rear would be sweet.

Ace_Murdock

well my ultimate goal is to put a turbocharged 400 or something in my car. street driven and all. and with the car all apart might as well make it so that i can put in the widest tires i can, if needed.

i don't think the lca will hit first. it is close, but i believe sheet metal will hit first. i will check on that soon to make sure.