This wheel offset thing

Post Mon Jul 11, 2005 8:19 am

Is it just my car (of 1985 vintage) or are all E30s barring the 'ix' supposed to have an offset of 35mm?

I keep seeing people quote 25mm which must've come from somewhere, but my old steelies have 4 1/2J14ET35 stamped on them and the handbook also states that all cars have a 35m offset.

I'm confused and my head hurts!

Can anyone clear this up for me?

Cheers!

Alex

Post Mon Jul 11, 2005 10:33 am

its the bbs wheels that have offset of 24 0r 25. (not sure which). steelies re 35.

Post Mon Jul 11, 2005 10:33 am

Bottletops and steelies are indeed 35mm, but BBS are 24...

Looks better with em further out in the arches & wider wheels would have clearance issues on 35mm

HTH!

Post Mon Jul 11, 2005 1:34 pm

Well, you say that, but my 7x17" wheels have an offset of 35mm and don't appear to be about to foul anything (not that I've tried yet).

How odd! :lol:

Post Mon Jul 11, 2005 4:39 pm

Ah well!

It is only 10mm we're talkin about here... & a wider track would potentially improve handling too... if you could even notice the difference!

Post Mon Jul 11, 2005 6:26 pm

i think they will rub mate, u would need quality hub eccentric rings from say H&R with just 4x100 holes in them, proper longer bolts too! this is important as i've seen a wheel fall off with spacers and normal bolts!!!!

hartge 16x7.5 are et25 and it's a nats cock between the chock and wheel

same with alpinas 16x7 et28

my 2p as u are a turbo guru!

Actually i'm sure Ian 332 has 17x7 bbs wheels with et35 and he has 10mm spacers! and very large porker brakes at the front!!

HTH

Post Wed Jul 20, 2005 10:06 pm

Ah haaa!

Just been thumbing through my "things to do on the cars" book and found this web address which explains it!

Looks like the more +ve offset you have, the more wheelarch clearance you get but the closer to the struts etc. the rim & tyre get:

Post Thu Jul 21, 2005 12:05 am

Turbo-Brown wrote: Looks like the more +ve offset you have, the more wheelarch clearance you get but the closer to the struts etc. the rim & tyre get:

Erm yeah... could have told you that! :lol:

More offset = more distance from wheel centre to hub = smaller track.

Less offset = less distance from wheel centre to hub = wider track.

With the associated clearance issues you'd expect from either!

& you only get negative offsets on 4x4s really, so no need to worry about that.

Post Thu Jul 21, 2005 8:14 am

fair enough. It's just I couldn't understand why people were saying I'd get rubbing with 7J17 rims and a 35mm offset when infact there should be more clearance

Post Thu Jul 21, 2005 11:04 am

Turbo-Brown wrote: fair enough. It's just I couldn't understand why people were saying I'd get rubbing with 7J17 rims and a 35mm offset when infact there should be more clearance

More clearance to the arches, but less to the struts...

Post Sat Aug 06, 2005 1:39 pm

bringing an old thread back to life,

hi, one of my mates has just bought an e30 320i 2dr and wants to buy some 18's for it, what offset should he be looking for?

cheers, tim

Post Sat Aug 06, 2005 3:05 pm

timbob wrote:bringing an old thread back to life,

hi, one of my mates has just bought an e30 320i 2dr and wants to buy some 18's for it, what offset should he be looking for?

cheers, tim

Welcome to the zone

PM replied to!

Post Sat Aug 06, 2005 8:13 pm

thanx for the welcome and the reply dude, very helpful

Post Sun Aug 07, 2005 7:44 am

i was running 205 tyres on 7" rims with an offset of 37mm with not rubbing on the strut..