depends what metal.. lightweight aluminum on good wheels does not weight much.


Im not saying a 22" wheel with a 1/2" side wall is good and better for handling but i am saying that 18" wheels are not going to hurt your car for corners and stopping "unless" you get way bigger tires and then stock and the overall height of the wheel/tires are way bigger then stock.

i put the 18s on it cause my sister gave them to me for free. i have 245/40/18s im gonna put 245/45/18s

We're talking about power to the ground.

With the same materials and style of construction and overall diameter and width, a 16" wheel/tire combo will weight less than an 18" combo.

And steel will typically be lighter than aluminum in the same wheel size because steel has a higher tensile strength. You need less of it than cast aluminum.

This is why my slicks are on 15" steel wheels.

Look at typical racing applications. Not sports cars. All the major road/track professional race series run tires with a high sidewall profile for a reason. The sidewall must flex to leave the contact patch on the road. Low-profile tires can't do this effectively.

my stock wheels on my Ei weight more then my 17" wheels and tires i got.



Wren.. So your saying all the GREAT handling cars from BMW, Merc, another European Co. are all doing it wrong....

And im not talking about what we all see on ricer cars and stuff. im talking about 18" wheel setup here sense you just told someone in this thread that they are not good.

Im sorry but my 15" Wheels form my SE weight WAY more then my New 17" Aluminum wheels.

and my brother Aluminum wheels on his 94 Bronco that are bigger then the stock Steel one weight less then the Steel ones.

It depends on the design. Steel wheels CAN be much lighter because they require less VOLUME for strength.

You have to remember that car manufacturers do things for SHOW sometimes, not just GO.

Go look at an F1 or NASCAR tire. See any low-pro'* there? Nope.

My 33.5" tires on 16x10" cast aluminum wheels are quite a bit lighter than my 33" tires on 15x10" steel wheels.

But, the FORGED wheels are lighter than the cast ones.

If you want light, forged aluminum.

If you want strength, steel.

But, as a 4x4 magazine showed, unless you're planning on running with NO tires whatsoever, you're really not gonna break any wheel.

And, for drag racing, you want a totally different tire/wheel setup than you want for road or circle track racing. Everyone knows that the fastest things on the quarter mile all have huge flexy wrinkle-wall tires. That works.

Cornering is different. Having too much sidewall flex causes the tread to roll under the wheel, and you start running up on the sidewall. New 18x8.5 forged wheels can be as light as about 17 or 18 pounds. Light enough? The only thing you are giving up with a short sidewall is ride, and resistance to damaging your wheels.

I'm pretty sure Busch and Cup cars would handle better with 16 or 17" wheels, but they've stuck to the "stock car" size 15" wheels/tires for tradition. Though, since most of the car bodies they style theirs after, have stock 16 and 17" wheels, they should probably move up in size eventually. Since they are "stock cars". Uh, right.

I've confirmed some of my suspicions with a co-worker who actually does road racing in his Evo. No, stop. Not a riced out evo, a real, performance-only, built inside-and-out, Evo. And he'* had other vehicles that he'* done performance mods, too, Mustangs, Jeeps, etc... so he'* got a well-rounded background.

Now, if you're talking about tires from 5-10 years ago, then yea, maybe the real-short sidewalls weren't handling as good back then, but tire tech has changed apleanty in the past few years. You can get a tire with a UTOG rating of 420/A/A, or even as much as 500/A/A, back in the mid 90'*, I was happy to get a mid-performance tire with a 320/A/B rating. Treadwear is up, heat dissipation is up, wet traction is up, dry traction is up. Pretty amazing stuff, since it'* still made out of rubber.

i want to use my riv as a street car, i got a mustang for drag.

There'* a range of sidewall height in which a given car is going to perform well. It also depends alot on the tire. 18" wheels aren't going to kill you in the cornering dept., as long as you get good tires. But, they are going to affect your acceleration. Probably not noticeably, but when you get your timeslip, you'll see it. The problem isn't just overall weight, it'* WHERE the weight is at. Take two wheel/tire combos that weigh exactly the same overall, with the same overall height. One with 16"wheels, one with 18" wheels. The 18" combo will run considerably slower, because the mass of the rim is further out from the center of the wheel, and therefore has greater rotational inertia.
With the smaller wheel, the weight of the outer rim is closer to the center, and has less rotational inertia. It'* just like a skater pulling her arms in tight to her body to spin faster.

If you really want to work your 1/4 mile times, go ahead and keep the 18s, but get a cheap pair of 16" steelies, (or 15"*, better yet, if they fit) and slap some drag radials on them for the track. If you get some that are a little shorter overall than stock, that'll also help a bit. Just watch your shift points. Changing tire height will also change where on the track you're shifting, which could be good or bad...

18s did not hurt me too bad at the track. I had n o problem knocking off several 2.1 60ft times along with several 14.3-14.4 runs in the 1/4 mile on a nearly bone stock car, only changes were a smaller sc pulley, FWI, and shift kit. stock pcm, stock exhaust, stock valvetrain. However my 18s are light compared to most.

General rule still stands. 18s will hurt your performance. How much, depends on the weight of the tire/wheel combo. My 18" tire/wheel combo weighs 9lbs more than my stock 16s did.