WIDENING THE STOCK WHEELS

[2011WhiteSS]

I agree on the fronts to be out a little more.
Look great


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[fastbroshi]

Just a quick update. The spacers I used were actually 25mm. I ran into a big problem since I got everything mounted. In the pics you may have noticed my lugs look like the stockers, because they are. I decided black would look better and got some black lugs on ebay, despite their almost 1mm difference in length. This turned out to be a big deal because even though the height difference was neglible, internally they were over 3.5mm shallower than the stock lugs.

So I went to torque down these lugs and they bottomed out, very close to having the wheel cinched up to the spacer fully. So I go to tighten them some more and ended up spinning the spacer studs in the spacer. After I'd done three I knew something was wrong. I ended up having to have a shop drill out the offending studs because my drill bits are crap. Don't ever buy Harbor Freight drill bits of any kind, they are crap. I purchased the cobalt ones thinking they would at least do a decent job, but no. They did do a good job at all.

On that note, their sawsall blades are crap too. Diablo blades are 10x better.

[rb]

I just finished getting my car back on the road after finally committing to do this modification and felt I had to pay homage to this epic thread. I have been reading and digesting this information since its beginning and feel I owe it to everyone who has contributed and to those who are thinking about doing this to offer my results.
I had Weldcraft https://weldcraftwheels.com/ do the work to widen the wheels. They are absolutely great to work with and I will recommend them without hesitation. I had them widen both the front and rear wheels, which is different from what anyone else has done I think. I had them add 1” to the fronts and 1 1/2” to the rears. In the end, about 3/16” - 1/4” of material was lost performing the modification. So the fronts ended up measuring ~8 3/4” wide and the rears ~10 1/4” wide. I knew that there would be some material lost but I was expecting it to be about 1/8”. So bear this in mind if you are planning on doing this. After having the tires mounted on the wheels and seeing how they look and putting the wheels and tires on the car, l’m actually glad they are a bit narrow. I ended needing some extra clearance for the parking brake cable anyway, so it worked out fine and tire to fender fit looks great, and the inner fender and front strut clearances are all good.
I also used 15mm Eibach bolt-on, hub-centric wheel spacers/adapters on both the front and rear wheels. This is something different from what others have done too. It seems 20mm spacers have been the most common used. I did have to shorten the wheel lug studs but only back to where the threads started, so no lost threads.
The only clearance problem I had was the aforementioned parking brake cable on the passenger side. I was able to fix this by fabricating brackets to re-route the cables and take up some slack.
I should mention that I have Ridetech coilovers on the car and am lowered about 1” in the front and 1 1/8” in the rear. Measuring from the bottom of the wheel lip to the fender is 25 7/8” front and 26” rear.
I’ve only had it back on the road for a few days days but so far I’ve had no problems and am really liking the way it looks.

[SSammy]

Lookin’ good! Major improvement over the stock appearance. I like it.

[olblue75]

Wouldn’t it have been just as cheap to buy ZL1 or 1LE fitment wheels?

[rb]

Originally Posted by SSammy

Lookin’ good! Major improvement over the stock appearance. I like it.

Thank you.

[rb]

Originally Posted by olblue75

Wouldn’t it have been just as cheap to buy ZL1 or 1LE fitment wheels?

Yes, probably cheaper considering all the shipping costs involved with widening the stock wheels. I am just a fan of Sangyup Lee’s original 5th generation Camaro design, the 2006 concept car especially. I think the wheel design is an important part of the concept car’s design as a whole, and I wanted to keep that intact.