Two installments ago we put the Rocket Bunny wide body kit on our Project V8 RX-7 and if you remember it was looking pretty damn stupid on the stock wheels and tires inboard at least 6 inches on each side.
It’s hard to imagine how a wheel and tire combo will end up looking on a car if it’s not something someone has already done before so we were naturally a little worried about how our wide body FD would turn out. The funny thing was we never intended to go wide body in the first place.
The decision came about by accident because of one tiny assumption we (I) made. Once the suspension installation was completed in our last installment we only needed tires to replace the well worn dried out pair on our RX-7 and the project would be roadworthy. The question came down to how big of a tire could we get to fit in the back to get all the torque our E-ROD LS3 was putting to the ground! To avoid rubbing the inside of the stock fenders in the front the tire could not be much larger than 25 inches in diameter. One of the few tires that satisfied that constraint and offered us some fat options for out back was the Toyo R888—a DOT legal R-compound tire. Up front a 255/35ZR18 R888 has an overall diameter of 25.1 inches—close enough, and pretty wide. For the rear, the 295/30ZR18 that was also 25.1 inches in diameter. A 295 is cutting it pretty close though as far as width. We had 285 width Potenza S-03’s before and they fit fine but these are R compound tires and those sizes can be a little more variable—you need to look at the tire manufacturer’s specifications for overall width to be sure.
Here at MotoIQ though we are fortunate enough to have a lots of tires laying around. Though not R888’s we did have an R compound tire of the exact same spec (295/30-18) mounted to a set a wheels for a different [to remain unnamed] project car that happened to have the exact same lug pattern and offset needed to fit our FD perfectly!
