It looks like 245s will fit on the front, so I was wondering what if I rotated the front wheels to the rear. Will the offset or size of the rears cause a problem on the handling?

Will the rear wheels fit over the Sport Brakes?

 

Are you stock? Then don't rotate your staggered wheels. Why would you even think that you should put the bigger wheels in the front? That's dumb.

 

Well I almost wouldn't mind acquiring two more front wheels and using them for the back. I would like to have a square setup in the future. From everything I see, 245/45/18 will fit all around. I am not looking to track them. I might think about gettting some 18x8 wheels, if they look good, fit, and are lighter than stock. 19s seem silly.

I would imagine that the front wheels would fit on the back esp when the positive offset on the fronts are less than on the rears. I like the old wheels better than the duck feet.

 

This is heading to left field, but when did offset direction change? Used to be, what is labelled positive offset now was negative. When I shopped for wheels for my Sentra SE-R twenty years ago, FWD offsets were negative. Modern wheels are designed no different, even for RWD and AWD; car makers want the outer face flush with the tire, seemingly to reduce turbulence and to put the kingpin and rotor as far outboard as possible. Now however, offsets are positive.

 

You can run a square tire setup on staggered wheels, the stagger isn't that much. You'd just have to unmount and remount/re-balance your tires when rotating. I would think fronts would work in the rear, however.

My understanding is that offset is however far the mounting face (idk what that's actually called) is from the true center line of the wheel. Positive is further towards the face and negative is closer to the car.

 

For Sport brakes (the big Akebono calipers) the split spoke 18s that you posted won't work without a 15mm spacer IIRC. If you just want to run some lightweight 18s that will clear the BBK look at Wedssport, Work Emotion, or SSR GTv lines, most of the 18s from those lines that are more than 9" wide w/ offsets in the +30s will clear. Also the 18" oem z wheels also clear.

 

You are correct in both the mounting face and what offset means. Thing is, 20 years ago, negative offset put the mounting face closer to the outside of the wheel. The muscle car deep dish wheels had positive offset. Now, it's the other way around. When did it change?

 

It didn't exactly. 20 years ago people were talking about "backspacing" rather than offset.

 

Nope, offset was very much discussed by the import crowd in the Nineties.

 

You mentioned muscle cars so I assumed thats what you were talking about. The import scene has always dealt with offset, but what positive and negative means hasn't changed. Maybe a case of old timers?

 

If I remember right my FWD car needed a +40 offset, or I had to roll the fenders. Don't know too many cars with a Negative Offset.

I thought the wheel in my pic was the one from a G37xs, I found one with what looked like those wheels and the Akebono Brakes. My bad. The only thing that sucks about those brakes is the clearance issues.

 

Could be.

 

That is how I remember it. If I recall correctly, the thickness of the spacers moved the wheel out. The thickness of the spacer was the "offset".

I'm circa mid 60's muscle cars (Old Timer :-) But then, that was 50 years ago, so I might be wrong. Maybe someone else can comment.

 

If you look at wheel makers that today still cater to the Muscle Car crowd, backspacing is still a primary point of consideration.

 

Offset hasn't changed. But more RWD cars were close to a 0 offset. Most FWD were at least 30 or 35 or higher. Now there are more variations of both from what I've seen.