Powder coating was not applied to the outer barrel to improve the grip between the tire’s bead and the wheel itself.
To be honest, I was extremely nervous to mount the wheel for the first time. There was no room for error.
My measurements turned out to be spot-on. With millimeters of clearance to spare, I was able to fit an 11.5” wide rear wheel under our NSX!
Up front, in order to clear the massive Performance Friction Brakes (PFC), wheel spacers were required due to the shape of the spokes. If the offset was done entirely at the wheel, the spokes would contact the caliper. So, we had to go with higher offsets and use spacers to maximize the clearance to the caliper. I designed these spacers in CAD and had them cut to 6mm, 7mm, and 8mm widths to fine tune the clearance to the caliper.
A 7mm spacer gave us ~3mm of clearance to the caliper, which is the general rule of thumb for brakes.
9 comments
Jesus Christ, that is one great-looking car! That massive rubber and functional stance really bring out the purpose of the NSX.
Thank you very much. It took a lot of planning and testing but i’m extremely happy with how everything came together visually and performance wise. Stay tuned for when we track test and compare it to standard 17/18 tire sizes!
Billy, you are making the best content out there on car websites right now. Keep it up. I also enjoyed seeing you in Dahm’s RX7 series!
Thank you for the kind words. I’m trying to put out unique and interesting content. Spread the word! 🙂
There will be more Project FD RX7 Restomod coming up soon, so keep an eye out!
Thanks for including the wheel and tire weights. Pretty amazing that you could add that much tire and still lose some unsprung weight.
Now you just need a twin-turbo and sequential gearbox to make the ultimate NSX!
“Plus, it raised the ride height by over an inch, which is not good for looks, handling, or performance.”
Do you have any idea if dropping an inch (going the other way) would help handling?
My logic as to why it may work, preserves suspension geometry, reduces unsprung weight, opens up possibility for cheap, fun tyres.
Reasons why it may not work, ground clearance.
The 1 inch smaller diameter tire will drop the ride height 0.5″ without any other change, which is a win-win. The ability to lower it another 0.5″ from a fender clearance standpoint will have benefits and negatives (lower center of gravity, but less ideal suspension geometry). Depending on the rest of the setup this can be good or bad, but typically it will still be good. Ground clearance isn’t an issue on track.
Thank you so much.
I’m a casual driver and would like to get a set of spare rims for track tyres. I’d like to go to 16″ down from my stock 17″ and maintain the tire sidewall height.
All this time I didn’t realize you were the wheelman with the Mustang too. Hopefully other tire manufacturers start offering stuff like this, namely Toyo as I’m required to run their tires in my series. It would be awesome to datalog tire temps and pressures over the course of a race.