I read a post lastnight about using wheel adapters, someone wa talking about having a wider footprint on their sub.............so that got me to thinking. What if the stock rims could be widened, still have the same backspacing/offset but be able to fit a wider tire under the car...................Ive looked and the tires on my sons subaru look like wheelbarrow wheels. I know that the wider the surface of a tire placed in relation to the road or other surface will increase the traction of the tire.

 

but I get back to my ?.............has anyone tried to widen the stock rims? Or is this just a waste of time?

Stockton wheel $$. J

waste of time and money, when you can get a wide aftermarket 6 lug wheel and drill it, or do the 6-lug mod on your hubs....

 

you can run 225 width tires on the 14" steel pugs without any problems too...

 

and with increased width (and traction) you have a greater rolling resistance.

Personally I like pizza cutter tires for these little rigs.

 

An option would be going with the 6lug conversion and running old chevy/toyota/jeep (fullsize) rims that have less back spacing and wider rims. Then you can put on a lot wider tires.

 

Note McBrat's comment on rolling resistance. Going to take more power to ovecome the increased resistance.

if you have an ea81, just switching to ea82 rims will get you a wider footprint.

if you have an ea81, just switching to ea82 rims will get you a wider footprint.

 

not in the case of wagon wheels. the ea82 wagon wheels have .5" more backspacing, pushing the tires in closer.....

Why would you want to widen a 13" rim?

There is no real wide tire selection in 13" tires.

 

If you really want to a machine shop can do it, Mudrat can do it or you can do it.

I think by the time you have a machine shop do it, you could have custom rims made just about as cheap.