16 wheels on mk1

I would have thought that you'd look to keep the same overall diameter and therefore swap to, say, 205/45/16 (from 195/50/15, from 185/60/14), which would mean the same body height from the ground?

If not, surely your speedo would be miles out and you'd kill all acceleration if you went bigger rolling radius?

Bilbo is probably the best man to answer this, what with his recent off-roader efforts lol

I use 'willtheyfit' as a wheel/tyre size conversion resource www.willtheyfit.com/index.php?width=195&aspect=50&diameter=15&wheelwidth=6&offset=38&width2=185&aspect2=60&wheel_size=14&wheel_width=5-5&offset2=45 (might take you to my last looked-at sizes??)


as to increasing wheel diameter, are you looking at a smaller profile tyre to retain factory speedo readout or to increase tyre profile for more ground clearance? - if the latter, you may find issues with tyre & arch / inner-arch rubbing or worse )

if you want the low-look but your local roads are covered with potholes & speedbumps then you need to find a mid-ground, my car sits low and only scrapes on a few speedbumps (roads in South Wales are terrible!)


how low is your car? my Eunos is in the photo below (on 195/50/15" tyres for reference)




Rich.

I put 16s on my mk2 from 15s. I wanted to change the style and arranged a straight swap for my 15s, and genuinely missed that they were 16s until I was on his doorstep 60 miles away.

Definitely a mistake. They didn't really didn't fit under the arches so I had to roll them on the rear, the impact on acceleration was very noticeable. The impact to the handling was not as bad as I thought it was going to be but it was still negative.

My wheels had a bit of a stretch on the tyres and they surprisingly put up with a LOT of abuse on track. I was nervous for the stretch and peeling them off the rims when I first got them but they put up with a hell of a lot without peeling, even drifting.

There is no doubt that the car handles better on 15s though. The ride is smoother, the turn in is faster, the roll is more predictable (the lower profile rears made it skippy). I wouldn't do it again.

the larger wheels tramline and, frankly, the standard 16s that came on the mk2.5 euphonic were massively heavy. sure you could buy some lightweight 16" wheel but the availability of light weight 15" options is far superior.. not to mention cheaper tyres - 6uls, prorace, the discontinued DTCs... - can be as light as 5.6-5.2kg. If you're a bit mad you can find 15"s under 4.2KG, but you will pay moar.

I'll buck the trend and say that I was 100% happy with 16s on my Mk1. Had them for a couple of years, and the only issue I had was when I changed to 215 tyres, which rubbed.

I wasn't super low, I think at that point I was lower by about 60mm. I'd be more worried by the weight of the wheel / tyre setup than the size. Mine were lighter than most 15s so I found them to be really good, especially on track. 4.7kg per wheel from memory

Never had any issues with tramlining, although my geo was set up correctly

I only changed to go to 15 x 9 6ULs, which were heavier and tramlined more because of the width

Russell