18" Wheel help
Correct me if i'm wrong, but i believe i found a set that may work. I think they would look pretty good on my Demon, it's one of the only ones i can find that i really like so far.
Tsw Clypse Wheel 18x8.5 5x114.3
TSW Wheel 1885CLP305114B76 TSW Wheels Clypse Series Gloss Black Wheels | Summit Racing
TSW Wheel 1985CLP205114B76 TSW Wheels Clypse Series Gloss Black Wheels | Summit Racing
If so, what size tires would you go with?
As always, thanks for your help 72bluNblu!
Front's will work fine, a 245/40/18 should work well and shouldn't require any body modifications. A 255/40/18 will fit the rim, but that's a 26" tall tire so it will probably be VERY close to the lower corner of the front fender on a '71. One of those situations that will come down to ride height and body tolerances on your car.
In the back if you run the A-body 8 3/4 with BBP axles and the stock spring locations you'll probably need a ~5mm-7mm spacer with those 18x9.5's. It would also leave you room for a disk brake upgrade in the back later, add the disks and lose the spacers. Or if you run a 1/2" spring offset in the back, no spacers needed. With the stock spring locations and those 18x9.5's you should be able to get a 275/40/18 or 275/35/18 in there if you want, they're a pretty tight fit on Demons/Dusters/Dart Sports but because you can fine tune the placement with a small spacer you should be able to get them in there. A 255/40/18 would be no problem, and there are some 265/40/18's out there depending on the particular tire you go with. For example, a Kumho Ecsta PS91 comes in all of those sizes. I haven't run them but the specs looks pretty good
https://www.tirerack.com/tires/tire...ewall=Blackwall&partnum=64YR8PS91XL&tab=Sizes
Honestly
@72bluNblu could easily collapse his knowledge on wheel fitments for mopars into a single digital asset like a PDF to sell for $5 each and probably fund another project. Make chatgpt do all the time consuming format stuff.
I dunno about easily. Some of it is really simple, just taking the distance from the wheel mounting surface back to the springs and out to the body. Those numbers are fairly well established, most of the tolerances are on the body side of it.
Where it starts getting complicated is the different body styles, changes to clearances over the years of production (like the fender openings on the '72 Dart fenders being made longer), ride height, section width for a tire on a rim that's narrower or wider than the measuring rim, etc.
So it would be easy to just have a spreadsheet do math based on the spring locations, front track width, width of the rear end and the body style of the car. I mean I use a tire/wheel calculator to check combo's against what I know fits. But it wouldn't be super accurate by itself either.
If you try to plug in all the model year or bodywork changes, ride height differences, sidewall flex on tires for 15" rims vs 18" etc it gets a lot more complicated. Not saying it couldn't be done but I certainly wouldn't say it's easy. And ultimately its all just a recommendation, the body tolerances on these cars weren't perfect at all so at some point it just comes down to how big of a risk you want to take with the wheel/tire combination and whether or not you're willing to make something fit if it doesn't quite.
