I want to fit Porsche "twists" to a 70 beetle (BJ beam, IRS rear).The wheels are 17 X 7 with 55ET. Besides the obvious step of having 5 X 130PCD discs/drums what is required to make them fit and maintain some turning circle etc? Any helpful advice gratefully accepted.

On the front you will have a major reduction in lock with 17" X 7 "wheels with a 55mm ET, they will hit on the trailing arm set bolt at the torsion bar end and the inside of the wheel arch, also under suspension compression they will hit the standard mudguard, here is my convertible fitted with a set of 17" Porsche wheels with a ET of 55mm, ended up with a set of 16" boxter wheels, 6" x 16" and 16" x 7", perfect offset for the 1500 beetle. the other option is to narrow the front wheels to 17" x 6", the modifying of wheels in this manner is now illegal and cannot be engineered.

Possible but a bit of work

I will assume you are running standard brakes - so no allowance for changes there

Rears - you will need spacers. I ran Boxster 7" et40 and they just cleared. You will need to push your wheel out but will depend what tyre you run. You also need to turn the 3 spring plate bolts around to have the head on the outside.

Fronts you will need to narrow the beam.
My experience has been with struts.

Thanks for the replies, the convertible looks nice with the 17" s but I guess having no steering lock can get old very quickly.
So to fit these would require 15-20mm spacers front and rear and a narrowed front beam to compensate, unfortunately I am not sure of the lgeality of either of these mods in SA but I have read on forums of engineers okaying spacers as part of a disc brake conversion. I intend staying with the factory discs and drums though if I can.

Narrowing the front beam will solve none of the rubbing issues on the front trailing arms, it will also increase your turning circle as the tyre will now rub quicker on the inside of the wheel arch, If you space the wheels out then you end up placing more load on the bearings and ball joints while alleviating some of the rubbing issues, , also spacers are not legal, the 17" x & 7" wheels have a reasonable scrub radius, if you space them out you will alter the geometry, increase in bump steer, tramlining, on the rear of the convertible has 225/55/16 tyres with no spacers, plenty of clearance, do not fall into the trap of buying wheels and modifying the car to fit them. that process is back to front, on my Ghia I run 17" x 6" and 17" x 7" and these were custom made to suit the car and it shows in how it drives. None of my cars run narrowed beams.

Can you tell me the offsets you have on the wheels on the Ghia, I know there are after market 17" fuchs copies but I will have to research the offset on those as well,thanks for your replies.

There a custom three piece billet wheel from image wheels in the UK, I think the fronts have a ET of plus 55mm on the 6" X 17" and the rears have an ET of plus 23MM, Keep in mind that the car is a link pin/IRS and will not work on your car.plus the car has custom brakes that was taken into account when the offset was worked out. http://www.imagewheels.co.uk/index.html 

2 inch bj beam and 17 Fuchs et40, tyre choice dependant on how low u go ...

Empi, any spacers involved front or rear ? is the rear short axle ? looks like they would fit (just) even without narrowing the beam

2 inch beam with 195/40.17 tyres, long axle, (17s wont fit the short axle - hit the spring plate)

Thanks Empi, looks like i'll be selling the twists and getting a set of these 17" fuchs

Hi

On the rear of my sons Beetle a 1974 1303 / L bug I ran 17x7 55ET Subaru wheels, I fitted a steel 944 disk rear end, this gave about 25 mm per side track increase which allowed them to fit perfectly. They fitted perfectly on the front with skinny struts but that's no use to your application

Steve

As I said previously do not buy a wheel and then modify the car to suit, speak to a engineer before you buy the wheels and find out if the modifications are legal as there is more to modifying your car than appearance.

the question is thugly wheels that fit or cool wheels that can be made to fit

There are plenty of cool wheels that fit with out making compromises in the handling and safety department.

Wide 5 seems to have the best looking wheels nowadays