Thought I would post up my ever continuing venture of fitting my 16x8 dekagrams with 225/50/16 re71r's to be used as a daily. I cant speak for other brands of tires in terms of fitment as manufacturer sizes vary and ANY larger than my re71r's will be even harder to fit without some legitimate fabrication.
Important stuff - Godspeed monoss coilovers, Rokblokz mudflaps( I refuse to take these off because im stupid )
Progress: Normal driving is pretty solid, 3/4 wheel lock causes a very small amount of rub on the center inside of front mudflaps. Reversing at 3/4 wheel lock rubs worse. The rears are solid at max height, very minor fender liner scraping on hard freeway bumps (thanks norcal freeways) If I cant get the fitment to a level of safety that makes me comfortable I'll scrap the tires and go 225/45/16 like a sane person
What I've done:
1) I had to ditch all the bolts holding my front mudflaps. The heads would scrape the sidewalls at 3/4 wheel lock. So those are gone and I have 24gauge copper wire with some poorly drilled holes holding them on. (Hooray professionalism).
2) I had to cut away pretty much all of the front mudflaps that are inside the wheel well. It just wasnt going to clear without a major mud flap diet.
3) In the front fender liners towards the cabin of the car is a recess for wheel clearance. Behind the plastic is a large tab of welded body panels (At least it seems like the spot where body panels meet) I had to cut away the liner there and grind away some of the welded tab. I only ground anything that stuck past the welds themselves. This is stupid and I dont recommend this. However I had to, otherwise it barely knicks the sidewall at 3/4 wheel lock and puts shallow cuts in the tire. I was hunting a "tinging" noise and saw the paint on the tab was gone meaning it was catching there. If you do this please make sure to deburr and round any potential sharp edges. if its still rubbing there it could slice your tire at a very bad time.
What I still need to do: Roll the fenders and add camber. The fenders themselves dont rub the sidewalls at the height I'm running. However the fronts are higher than the rears to make that happen. Some camber up front and rolled fenders will allow me to drop the front to match.
I just finished #3 and will find out if the noise dissapears. Otherwise more grinding. It would only catch the tab when I'm turning into driveways due to the load on the suspension.
So all in all they look great and the grip and handling are both superb. I only went with this size because im too competitive at autocross and did not do enough research on tire size fitment for the FiST. But I'm stubborn and like problem solving.
I attached some pictures to make sense of the bad description of my progress.
Important stuff - Godspeed monoss coilovers, Rokblokz mudflaps( I refuse to take these off because im stupid )
Progress: Normal driving is pretty solid, 3/4 wheel lock causes a very small amount of rub on the center inside of front mudflaps. Reversing at 3/4 wheel lock rubs worse. The rears are solid at max height, very minor fender liner scraping on hard freeway bumps (thanks norcal freeways) If I cant get the fitment to a level of safety that makes me comfortable I'll scrap the tires and go 225/45/16 like a sane person
What I've done:
1) I had to ditch all the bolts holding my front mudflaps. The heads would scrape the sidewalls at 3/4 wheel lock. So those are gone and I have 24gauge copper wire with some poorly drilled holes holding them on. (Hooray professionalism).
2) I had to cut away pretty much all of the front mudflaps that are inside the wheel well. It just wasnt going to clear without a major mud flap diet.
3) In the front fender liners towards the cabin of the car is a recess for wheel clearance. Behind the plastic is a large tab of welded body panels (At least it seems like the spot where body panels meet) I had to cut away the liner there and grind away some of the welded tab. I only ground anything that stuck past the welds themselves. This is stupid and I dont recommend this. However I had to, otherwise it barely knicks the sidewall at 3/4 wheel lock and puts shallow cuts in the tire. I was hunting a "tinging" noise and saw the paint on the tab was gone meaning it was catching there. If you do this please make sure to deburr and round any potential sharp edges. if its still rubbing there it could slice your tire at a very bad time.
What I still need to do: Roll the fenders and add camber. The fenders themselves dont rub the sidewalls at the height I'm running. However the fronts are higher than the rears to make that happen. Some camber up front and rolled fenders will allow me to drop the front to match.
I just finished #3 and will find out if the noise dissapears. Otherwise more grinding. It would only catch the tab when I'm turning into driveways due to the load on the suspension.
So all in all they look great and the grip and handling are both superb. I only went with this size because im too competitive at autocross and did not do enough research on tire size fitment for the FiST. But I'm stubborn and like problem solving.
I attached some pictures to make sense of the bad description of my progress.
![[wink]](/images/smilies/wink.gif "Wink [wink]")
![[thumb]](/images/smilies/icon_smile_thumb.gif "Thumbs Up [thumb]"){kind=icon}
