Hi Everyone,

Has anybody fitted 17 inch wheels to a beetle.

I wanna fit 205 x 40 x 17 tyres on 17 x 7.5 wheels

The car will be droped 2.5 inch using drop spidles on the front
The front beam is standard.

Could anybody tell me if that would be ok or do i need to stick to 15 inch wheels.

thanlks

Yep - all depends on the offset

I run 205 on 6" up front and 225 on 7" on the back
All under stock guards

Personaly - i think 205 on 7.5" is a bit tight

have a play here

http://www.1010tires.com/WheelOffsetCalculator.asp 

http://www.rimsntires.com/rt_specs.jsp 

i was running 225 all round on 17 x 7 verde dimonds

hi,
you do not say what car you have, if it is a trailing arm front end you will have trouble running a 7" wheel under standard mudguards on the front as it will hit the trailing arm when you turn the wheels, the photo's show my cab fitted with a 7" front and a 8.5" rear,the fronts look good but have to many fittment problem, i could only fit a set of 16" x 6" on the front with a 195, 55 tyre, on the back is a 7" x 16" with 225, 55 tyre all under the guards with no issues

Hi

7.5 is a tad wide for the front if you want to turn corners and under the current RTA rules you can only run over 7 inches wide if the car weighs in at over 1000 kgs.

Steve

good thing mine now weighs 1004kgs

Quote:

Originally posted by Joel good thing mine now weighs 1004kgs

it goes on the unmodified weight
all bugs are under 900kg

Hi Brian

No its finished weight of the car.

Steve

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i have a 68 chassie with a 64 body, 5 x 130 i think the offset is about 40

no, im asking if it can be done

Hi,my experence tells me that you cannot run a seven inch rim on the front under a standard guard on a trailing arm front end, the sevens on the convertable hit the shock and the trailing arm and had hardly any turning radius, if you narrow the beam you will have all the problems that having incorrect geometry will bring to the front end of the car, i have 7" x !7" on my 60 beetle but they required the use of wider guards to get the to fit to the car, track on the front is only 18mm over standard

7" will work on a balljoint front end with a 40offset but if you want a turning circle better than a bus you'll need to narrow the front end about 2" and run some spacers

Ive tried the 17x7et42 rims on my old 70 bug, fitment was perfect but like mentioned above they rub on the trailing arm with a stock width beam when on full lock

Hi, narrowing the beam and running spacers to fit the wheels under the guards raise a whole lot of problems with the geometry of the front end, the scrub radius will be change substantiality, you will increase the bump steer and tramlining not to mention the increased wear on the trailing arm bushes/ball joints/wheel bearings as you will be hanging the wheel further out on the suspension, narrowing the beam will not improve the handling of the vehicle either, the engineer i spoke to said that narrowing the beam to fit the incorrect offset wheel to the car would be illeagal as it changes the wheels relationship to the suspension,it's not as simple as just fitting them under the guards, the scrub radius is probably the most important thing that is overlooked when fitting wider wheels to your car, if you want the car to track well and not wander under brakes try to keep the track diamention on your vehicle as close as posible to standard diamention without narrowing the beam, the scrub radius is were a line drawn through the ball joints/kingpin and disects the tyre were it contacts the road looking from the front of the vehicle

Yet another good reason why I stick to my strut bugs

This also applies to the strut bug

Go check out germanlook where 100s of people already have

here was mine 7 x 17 4x130 stud pattern ball joint front

hi bugzla,
did you modify to fit the wheels, how much was it lowered.

nope they were a straight fit, lowered by one adjuster all the way it was pretty rigid i would put 2 in if i still had the car..... as for the back readjusted the torsion bars a few notches and handled like a gocart

What offset were your wheels Bugzla? And are you saying you didn't have to narrow your front beam? Also, did you get any fouling/rubbing when on full lock?
And it must have been fun looking for 4x130 wheels. I thought they would have been like finding fairies!

still had a bit of rubbing on the inner cant really remember the correct offset sorry........ but the wheels where blank and drilled to suite, the hardest thing was covering the stud pattern and having enough meat on the outer of the stud circle but they fitted like a glove not bad considering

Most of those Vault rims are all et40

they are a verde rim

Vault/Verde same diff

Funny if you painted your old one black, added Tbars and changed the rims to Fuchs it would be an identical twin to my old rotary bug before I put it all back to original panels