About all that I know about my wheel/tire setup so far is that I want to run a Simmons 5-spoke wheel (see pic), and I'll wrap them with BFG G-Force KD tires. I'm hoping I can fit a 17" x 10" in the rear of the car, and a 17" x 9" in the front, but I think it will be a tight fit. We'll see!

August 13 - Well, that was my original plan... I've revised it slightly! :) I'm still planning on the same wheel, but I've almost been talked into even a LARGER size! It just so happens that Jeff at Group A wheels (the North American distributor for Simmons) is in the process of making a custom set of these wheels for a 79 T/A, and he's using 17 x 10" up front, and 17 x 11.5" in the rear! YIKES! And both of those use 5.7" of backspacing...

Since I was so skeptical, Jeff offered to send me one of the wheels to try out on my car! Since the car is still in pieces, I could only try out so much. I received the 17 x 10" wheel last week, with a 275/40/17 tire mounted for testing. In the rear, it fits great! And as best I can tell, it looks like it will be a winner up front too. I just have to decide how wide I really wanna go in the rear now.

UPDATE - Ok, so I'm finally going to fill in the details! I didn't realize that I had never put the specifics of my choice here on this page. I keep getting asked over and over and over what I ended up with, and when I checked, sure enough it wasn't here! :)

I did use the Simmon FR wheel shown above. I ordered the 17 x 9.5" for the fronts, and the 17 x 11" for the rears. On both, I chose the 5.7" of backspacing that Jeff recommended. I went with the 275/40/17 tires on the front, and the 315/35/17 on the rear (Yokohama AVS Sports all around).

Now, all was not perfect with this setup, but only in one spot. The passenger side rear wheel/tire stuck out further than all the rest. I couldn't figure out why, but after some investigation, it seems that most 2nd gens have the rear axles offset slightly (about 1/4") to the passenger's side of the car. Thus my problem. To solve it, I sent the wheel back to Simmons and had a new set of spun aluminum rims put on it to give me a total of 6.2" of backspacing (the rims only allow 1/2" increments). I then used a 3/16" spacer to locate the wheel/tire exactly where I wanted it. These are the kinds of game you have to play when you are pushing the limits of tire/wheel size on a car like this...

Please note that I cannot guarantee that this combination will fit on all 2nd gen cars, especially since the front suspension I am using is so different than stock. And I have not proven at this point whether it will be trouble free for me either. I've seen no signs of rubbing on the rear, but I also don't have it at exactly the ride height that I want either. I probably will end up rolling the fender lip at some point though, just to be safe. On the front, I've seens some slight rubbing, but I plan to raise the front end slightly to help take care of that problem...

If you would like to see some pictures, take a look here. Those are raw pics of the actual wheels/tires on the rear of the car. You can see from the big_tires_left and big_tires_right pictures the difference that was originally there on the two sides.