MadaboutKitcars

I know I'm getting a little ahead of myself, but I've been looking at prospective wheel candidates for the Marlin.

The Marlin site recomends 15" wheels - Yet the Purple M-Powered monster had 17" wheels.

What's everybody else fitting? It's just that I've seen a set that I like, but need some assurance as to wether they'd fit.

The wheels in question

I'm starting off with 15" off an E36 205/65/R15 but I plan to get 17" made by Image to fit the car once I've used up all the tyres I have (I also have a set of 195/65/R15's with new tyres) - will also give me a little time to save up for them! As for size I was thinking 225/45/R17 same as what I have of my daily driver. Maybe a bit wider at the back to help put the power down given how light the car is. I really like deep dish alloys.

Once I've done the body work fittment I will try taking one of the wheels of my E46 to see what they look like on the Sportster. I did see on the Marlin owners club forum that some one was trying to fit M Roadster wheels, I think they are 255 at the back and 225 at the front both 17".



EDIT: Here it is (the wheels on my donor where 15 not 16 as I put the message though) http://www.marlinownersclub.com/forum.php?read=611&cat=3

Dont think it really went very far.

Can't see a problem with 17" wheels. Planning to go that way myself but h ow does larger wheel size affect speedo reading for sva purposes? Is it a major hassle to get it recalibrated?
Alfie.

As the alloy gets bigger you need to make the tyre wall hight smaller.

IE 205/65/R15 on 7.5J rim would be 225/45/R17 on 8J rim - the middle number is a percentation of the width.

Here are two online tools for doing the calculations:

http://www.tyresave.co.uk/tyresize.html

http://www.rochfordtyres.co.uk/tyrecalc.asp

There is a good explanation of all the numbers here:

http://www.performancealloys.com/find_tyresize.asp

Also as the rolling radius stays the same there's no problem with needing to change the settings on the speedo.

Wheels

I just bought a set of 16" genuine Alpina's.- I hope they are gonna fit.

The main thing to look for when buying wheels (IMHO) is that they were designed for fitment to an E30 in the first place. The correct fitting of wheels on the E30 relies on the hole in the centre of the wheel fitting precisely over the ring on the hub (not just the wheel bolts). You see a lot of discussion about aftermarket wheels not doing this - resulting in "wobbly wheels". Many of the aftermarket wheels are "universal fit" - meaning they don't actually fit anything properly!

There should be no worries about the speedo as most of the aftermarket ones (including the one supplied by Marlin I assume) can be callibrated to suit just about any wheel combination.

Cheers

Robin

Those should look good! Yeah there is a lot of talk about aftermarket replica's causing problem because the centre bore too big.