Quote:
Originally Posted by Sean@Phastek
So saying the stock 20" and 21" wheels & tires from GM are too big on the Camaro for best performance... what size do you recommend? 19" or 18"? x9.5" front & x11" rear?
Thanks!
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The key words are
best performance.
The track on a stock Camaro along with the staggered tire and wheel package will always produce heavy understeer. It is built into the package and cannot be tuned out without altering the track. You can certainly make it better with suspension tweaks, but the core issue is the track, wheel and tire package.
It is important to keep in mind that the OEM Camaro is a great car. I am talking about taking it to the next level. Most people will not run my tire and wheel package for many reasons. That doesn't make our selection wrong.
Our wheel and tire package increased the front track by 2" and the rear track by 1/2" for a net front track increase of 1.5". That is a huge benefit and gain. We did not want to increase unsprung weight with the tires and wheels. Moving up to a 305 / 30 / 20 would have increased the weight as it is such a huge increase in tire. Add to that we run 10.5" rims all around and even the lightest wheel would have offered minimal weight reduction. Using a 19" wheel we dropped almost 40 pounds of unsprung weight or roughly 10 pounds per wheel. That is huge from a handling perspective.
Now consider the brakes. 10 pounds spinning at 100 MPH takes a significant amount of braking power to stop. Remove 10 pounds and your brakes just improved -- a lot.
Next is the rear end effective gear change from a 3.45 to a 377 via the wheel and tire change. The car pulls like a truck and keeps right on pulling through 175MPH. That is as fast as we have taken it and it showed no signs of breathing hard.
I could continue to write a book on this, but this should be sufficient to help people understand why I refer to the OEM wheel and tire package as SUV or truck style. I do not say this to be offensive. It is just my opinion and opinions are like XXXholes. Everyone has one. We have several clients with Xa coilovers and 22" rims. The cars look great. I really mean that -- they are bad aXX. Our clients are very pleased with the way their cars perform and handle and I would have to say they are right. Would that be my choice for the
best performance no, but best performance is not the ultimate goal for everyone.