Okay, if you don’t know about my car here’s the full background: http://www.pittspeed.com/forums/showthread.php?t=31421
Over the last year I’ve changed my focus from primarily AutoX with a little Road Course on the side to primarily Road Course with a little AutoX on the side. I still enjoy AutoX a lot, but we’ve lost the really great venue out here that allowed for fun, fast, ‘big car’ friendly courses. The remaining venues are smaller and bumpier, and not my cup 'o tea so much. Meanwhile I’ve really started to enjoy Road Courses and found out how amazingly suited this car is to that environment.
So, working towards the goal of having a very solid, reliable track car I’ve made some changes in the last few months. I ordered up a dry sump (still waiting on parts), put in trans & diff coolers, put in a real front brake ducting setup, and finally upgraded to Wilwood 6 piston front calipers.
Now that last change is the source of my new dilemma. The CCW 505A 19” wheels I have for my street package were designed (using my very car, it’s featured on CCW’s site) to maximize the lip on the wheel. This means the spokes were designed to run as close to the stock brake setup as was safe. Now w/ my Wilwoods I need about ¾” of spacer (per side).
This is WITHOUT spacers, how it “was” before:
You can see the fronts are nearly flush as they sat before (19x10 w/ 275/30-19 tires). Now they are just slightly past flush (I’ll get pics ASAP) and look like they’ll rub a little at the top on a big bump, and they do rub just a tiny bit on turn-in at the back of the wheel house (the wheel house opens up and has more space after that). I could probably move down to a 265 or something and raise the car ¼” to ½” or something and it’d be okay.
So do I raise the car, find the perfect spacers, and have it be just “okay?” Or do I let the 505A’s go? They really made the car for me, other than being lowered the wheels are the only visual mod. Yet I hear time and time again that it’s the best looking C5 people have seen. But they still hold a lot of value right now and I could cash out on them pretty well (probably $2k+ stock wheels from somebody). If I do let them go, what do I run? Just stock C5 Z06 wheels (yes, my big brakes clear the stock 17x9.5” stock wheels and not my 19x10” 505A’s, it’s all about offset and spoke design, not diameter), or maybe run my CCW Classics (18x11” & 18x12”) as my street wheels with RA-1s.
If I run my Classics the nice thing is I wouldn’t have to change wheels at the track, I’d do Road Course on the RA-1s also. In this pic:
You can see the fronts just barely tuck in, but that’s on 315/30-18s. I’d move down to 305/30-18s if I went this route. Obviously the back stick way out (on 335/30-18s). I’d have the rear wheels rebuilt w/ new barrels/outers to change the offset and mini-tub the car so I could tuck the 335s also.
Thoughts?
-TJ