okay, so I’m thinking about driving home for winter break, so i can bring all my shit back up that i’ll be needing for the month and a half i’m home for school’s break…
M3 owners: can I buy some 16s or do I need to run 17+ inch wheels?
it’s so hard to find snows for the OEM 18s, not to mention they’re expensive as all hell…insurance, sales tax and the actual car cost me enough…heh. don’t feel like blowing a grand on snows right now…
advice? there’s so many guys selling 16" wheels with decent snows for 3 series on craigslist out here, I could snag em in a heartbeat if I knew what’d fit…
standard 3 serise wheels wont fit. I have 16" replica contours with blizacks. Seems to be a common solution for it. should be able to get a set of wheels and tires on BMW forums for around 400-600 with good tread. But availability might be a bit slim right now considering its snowed already.
edit:SOrry I assumed you had an E36… so replica contours arent the way to go if you dont have an E36. but the standard 3 series wheels wont fit in any situation.
16" do fit on E36’s but some require spacers. Tire rack even recommends 16" wheels when getting winter tires. And I am almost positive the wheels I have are 16" replica contours. I am willing to go out and measure… I have seen 16" contours with blizacks mentioned several places for good winter wheel combos on the M3 boards.
but you are right I was wrong about the 3 series wheels not fitting. I thought I remembered it being mentioned that the bolt pattern matched between the standard E36 and the E46 M3 but the bolt pattern was different between the E36M and the E46 M3
Bolt pattern was the same for all 3 series, E36 up, the offsets is what kills the E46M and E9X guys, an E46M CAN NOT use smaller than 17" rims, well you can but they are hard to find the one set that fits. E46M can use any 17"+ 3er wheel, you will just need spaces to fill the rear properly.
hm, the 800 bucks for the OEM 18s and snows is a great deal. I will search for that. sucks that I will have to replace those tires at some point in time…and that will cost a pretty penny. I wonder if I can snag a set of 17s cheap…
all e46 m3’s have traction control, and its the only reason its a sane idea to drive these cars in the winter… and its not really a traction control, its more of a stability control, as it does try to bring you straight again
IAN, those 13mm offset would require spacers on the rear, and probably the front as well…
WAT? You would need no spacers, you are going the wrong way with spacers, unless you have a magic spacer that adds offset, not takes away.
To run a 13mm offset in the front you would need to run like 4-5 deg of negative camber, the rear Might be fine. I was trying to fit a set of 18x9.5 Forglines with a +19MM offset, and I would have needed like 3 deg of negative camber in the front, and I really do not want to dial in suspension that much on a car that is driven on the street, as well as tire wear sucking.
To the craigslist add from New Haven, they would work with spacers (depending on the offset and width) but I would advise against running spacers on a car through snow, just too much corrosion could happen. Also with those you can not run anything but stock, non-zcp brakes. Look into them and find the width and offset and we can tell you more, but I would try not going below a 225 in the front and a 245 in the rear for tire width
They would FIT but they would not be ideal in anyway, way to narrow for the E46, and you would need 8mm spacers front and 18mm spacers on the rear to work. but still you are limited with almost no tire on a rear of a car that already likes stepping out with 275 PS2 in 100 deg heat
Side note: How the fuck do you make a degree symbol on a mac?
