RedCelica

17"s make the car handle sooo much better. Shorter sidewalls, wider tire choices, better rim selection. I wouldn't be looking at 16s personally.

ZDan

Specific tire make/model chosen will have way more impact on handling and feel than whether it's a slightly shorter sidewall on a 17" wheel or a slightly taller sidewall on a 16" wheel. In my opinion (based on my limited anecdotal experience), bigger diameter rims with lower-profile tires don't necessarily give much if any better performance.

My personal preference is to go with the smallest diameter wheel I can get my desired tire width for.

It would be interesting to do back-to-back comparisons between, say, 225/45-17 front 245/40-17 rear vs. 225/50-16 front 245/45-16 rear Hoosiers on the same car.

For me, on the street, I prefer to stay on 205/225 on 16s. If I were to make it a dedicated track setup, I'd probably run 245/45-16 Hoos all around. Of course there's more than one way to do things...

RedCelica

Best motoring did this a long while ago...check out this vid.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSpaWMFFpn0

To me that hard imperial evidence that 16"s are subpar to the 17s on any year s2000.

ZDan

Vaguely familiar with this, it never suggested that conclusion to me though! Different cars, different suspension setups, likely different alignments, different tire widths, possibly different tire make/model? I don't see that conclusively supporting 17" superiority, there are too many other variables.

Test I'd like to see is multiple runs on the SAME car swapping wheels/tires multiple times, the only difference being taller-sidewall 16" vs. shorter-sidewall 17" same-width tires.
Same make/model new same-age sticker tires of course.

Even that wouldn't necessarily be conclusive, though. Some specific tires will be less sensitive to sidewall height (one way or the other) vs. other make/model tires.

s2000Junky

Its not really that complicated a choice when you get down to it. 16" 17" 18" all have a set of tire widths available to them. 16's have a place, sure, but they are outdated and typically dont have the curb appeal the bigger wheels have on the s2k, which less face it is a huge part of the equation for people who are wheel shopping. The other is performance and cost. 17's cost, performance, available selections, hit the sweet spot for most. 18's are necessary if you wan tot run near OEM overall diameter tires but next level tire widths (285-295) for more performance.

Wheels are probably the most difficult thing to shop for, especially on this car where its fitment/offsets are limited. Looks, fitment, performance, cost all have to be right. The 17" RPF1 struck me initially, but then gave it another year of research for something out there which may be better, there wasn't for me, certainly that I could afford, so my initial thought turned out to be the right one. I had the grand idea of custom widening them to get more rubber to the ground several years later.

chikai

I just did the exact setup per the first post.

If you lower, you will 100% need to roll fenders. Too bad the 17x8's don't have the deep dish look.

Here is the pre-lower.



Here is the post lowering with -2.5 degree camber in rear.

maomaolong

Dude, the wheels look awesome on your car! what are the wheel settings before lowering the car? SBC color looks so nice!

chikai

What do you mean wheel settings?

maomaolong

what are your wheel and tire parameters ? 17x9 for all 4 wheels? As I remember SBC color Doesn't have 17x7.5.

1nate7

He specifically mentioned 8" front, so they are 8"/9" +45. You should be able to clearly see the difference in wheel face between front and rear.