For those of you out there who have dropped your car, what kind of clearance do you have for wheels/tires? Im dropping my firebird 2in. and was wondering if anyone had suggestions on wheel and tire size. I was originally going to go with 18X9 in the front and rear but now im thinking 17X9 might be a little better. With the drop having larger wheels wont seem as necessary to fill everythign up. Any opinions or suggestions would be great. The only thing i ask is that you dont tell me i shouldnt lower the car, because i am regardless of your opinions on that and it really wont help to criticize.

 

The wheel size choice has less to do than he tire size choice. Wheel sizes only come into play when determining the width (9" is fine for both diameters) & brake rotor size upgrades. The tire is what will hit more, like on the body & on a 18" that only means a lower # aspect ratio than the 17" but equal (or close to) overall diameter.

 

I kind of figured that. What i was worried about is if the 18 wheels alone take up quite a bit of space how small of a tire can i run before that may become an issue (if it would at all. I figured if i went with a 17 i would have more play with the clearance because id have a little more room on tire size. Maybe im overthinking it and the difference from an 17 to 18 inch wheel wouldnt even matter.

 

I think I am one of the few persons on here that actually have a full 2in drop. Check my signature for my wheel/tire combo. I have 0 problems with my setup.

 

Do you have any larger pics of your car showing the ride height? Mine will have a true 2in. drop once i install the parts. I guess thatll make the second person with it? lol

 

I do. I'll post some up later this evening. For the meantime check out our Official "slammed" thread. You'll see some great tire/wheel combos for us running with drops.

 

Thanks, i look forward to it and ill check out the thread as well.

 

you can fit pretty big wheels in with a two inch drop, my car is about 3in off the ground and i have 17x9.5 in front and 17x11 in the rear, so i think 18x9.5 or a little bigger should be no problem.

 

Yeah, i may be WAY overthinking this. I wasnt worried until some posts by people on the forums (who probably didnt have first hand experience) saying a 2 inch drop makes the car undriveable because of clearance issues and stuff. IDK about their cars, but my firebird sints pretty damn high stock so i figured itd be ok.

 

You definitely have to drive it different. you'll learn to look for things on the road and pay attention to curbs and bumps pulling into places. Its just a matter of getting used to driving a lowered car. Hell, my car doesn't sit as low as my buddies 2008 zr1. You never hear corvette guys complaining!

 

A 2" drop isn't anything to worry about. I've daily driven my Camaro with a 4" drop and it's still manageable. The first thing you'd have to think about is your tire to fender clearance. At 2" you'll still have a little compression room but you'll want to see if the tired will rub the fender liner, if so you can remove them or at least cut the entire top portion out, leaving the liner towards the rear to still protect the door hinges from debris. You will probably want to roll your fenders as well to gain tire clearance under compression and turning. The bump stops may also need to be trimmed down depending on how stiff or soft your springs are, you'll be very close to riding on them at static height.

Besides that the only real clearance issues to worry about are between suspension components themselves. Without any springs or bump stops the car will rest the A-arms on the K-member and the rear axle will rest on the inner fender. At that point the car will still have about 1.5-2" of clearance between the exhaust/crossmember to the ground (with a 25.6" tire).

 

Alright, thats reassuring. Thanks

I was kinda worried at a few points because of what other people said. Theres just no way to know who actually knows what there drop length is online. You can have two people with the exact same car and both say they dropped the same distance yet one looks great and the other says his is undriveable. I thought about how i was going to drop the car a lot before i took the dive so i hope it comes out well.