Ok, so I finally received my Catera wheels that I bought off of eBay today. They are 16X7, 42 mm offset, and weigh 20 lbs. a piece. My question is: look at the clearance between the wheel and caliper. There is probably 2 mm of clearance. Does anyone know if this will be a problem? The wheels are pretty beefy, so I doubt they will flex much. The thing I was worried about would be the caliper thermally expanding. I was thinking about using these for road racing, since 16" tires are cheaper. But I think I will run into problems. Personally, I think these would be fine for drag wheels. Please help me answer my questions. Thanks.

 

Eh, my 15s are tighter. Do calipers really expand that much?

 

My 16inch wheels are working out well, i have drag-radials on them also, there is no fender gap, they do stick out a good bit too.

 

Everything expands, and I am sure once you would heat them up to 500* or so that they would easily expand that distance. How did you get 15" to fit? Also, I doubt your 15s are tighter (wheel to caliper) unless there would be interference.

 

If you are really worried about clearance grind your calipers.

 

16s at 20lbs each? seems kind of heavy to me.... whats the purpose of these wheels?

 

Bolt them on.

 

They are heavy because they are OEM. Not nice aftermarket aluminum. I picked them up off of eBay for $175 shipped. I bought them for winter wheels, but am trying to weigh the options.

 

yeah i looked at them. i would agree with Erod and bolt them on.

 

Umm, is that a joke?

Did you not look at the pictures or read......that is my car with the wheels bolted on......

 

I run 16" steelies in the winter. They have about 3/8ths of an inch clearance on the front calipers, and they were OK. I just made sure that no snow or ice piled up in them.



I can't put my finger in one of the holes between the caliper and the wheel because there is not enough room. I was kind of worried once I saw it, but I didn't have any problems, and the wheels were burried in snow and ice more than once this past winter.

 

Mine are tight. I think less gap than yours.

 

So a 15" SAAB wheels will fit? Damn, I thought people said they wouldn't....

 

It takes some ingenuity and creativity but it fits.........












with machining.

 

What had to be machined? The spokes I take it? What tires are you running on there? Better be some DRs...

 

No I machined the calipers. I run a 235-60r15 Drag tire on them. M&H Tires My next set is a M&H slick.

My garage has some pictures of the calipers on the car without wheel. You can kinda see how much I took off.

 

I just checked out your gallery and answered my own question. But what about the macining part? 15 DRs would be better than 16s, but I might as well use what I got.

 

Ughh, that is out of the question for me, I want to run road cours too and wouldn't want to machine the calipers.

 

Stick with 16s then. its just hard to find slicks that will fit in our wheelwell that our 16". I know of about 4 tires i can run just from M&H.

 

I plan on going with the Hoosie QTPs, a couple people on here are running them with 16s.

 

yup they are a good drag tire. there just aren't a lot of slicks for us besides the QTPs in 16"; none to my knowledge