Dodge Challenger Wheels

cuda SRT8 is it possible the mustangII rotors you had at some point in their lives had a set of 5x115 wheels torqued on them changing THEIR bolt pattern? I agree with Deon the LX cars use 5x4.5 all the LX guys bitched about this back in the day because the 5x115 were more common in the aftermarket back in 2005 when they came out. Personally I have always said that isn't enough of a difference either way. You are talking .7 MILLIMETER in diameter. That's only .35 MM in radius, or five average human hairs thick.

The rotors were brand new. I still have them and have several steel wheels so I suppose I'm going to have to check this again, given the controversy. I'd love at some point to be able to swap rear drag race wheels and slicks between my two cars. Super busy in my life (both at work and at home) so this won't happen immediately but probably in a few weeks. Now y'all got me interested in this again...

I can't speak to wheel fitment but I will
say any time you torque a piece of metal
out of its designed shape, your asking for trouble.
Looks like at least you would get warped rotors not
to mention wheel and lug fatigue or stress fractures.

Cuda SRT8 said:

Dion, a pet peave of mine are the people on the internet who read a lot of stuff on the internet and then pass it on as truth. You will never catch me passing on someone else's information without qualifying it as such. It will either be my own experience with something, or something quoted by a recognized authority on the subject, such as Chrysler itself.

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I completely agree, no argument. I also am one that tries not to just listen and regurgitate other people's information. May not seem like that to you right now, I understand that, but I am. There are very few things I will get into debates about, but I don't like misinformation either and try correct it as best I can, when I can say from my personal experience that it is wrong.

I have put a gauge to a set of steel wheels and they are not 115mm. I did this with my own hands and even took photographs. I posted a link earlier that showed the photos. Is this definitive proof? Maybe not. I have to agree your method seems like a good one, but I still have to wonder if you would get different results with a guage.

Based on what you said I would have to guess the Mustang II rotor was not a hub centric to the wheel. I (honestly) wonder if that influenced things some.

If I had not tried it myself, I wouldn't be standing so firm on this. It's not about me being right, it's about what is reality.

Perhaps you didn't see earlier where I said I wasn't trying to challenge you. I'm not asking you to try a gauge because I want you to agree with me, I'm asking because if you get a different result, I will be prove something is wrong and I can change my stance. If I'm wrong I'd like to know.

I apologize that I came across so strongly, I should not have said it like I did. You have easy access to wheels, so I was actually making a request (much like I did in an earlier post), but I didn't ask in the right way.

But until someone puts a gauge on a wheel and gets a different result, I'm going to stand by the wheels being a 4.5" pattern. Based on personal experience.

Dion,
I don't take offense to your posts and I hope you don't take offense to mine. I'm aware posts and emails can come across different than they were meant, so I'm cool. I'll be looking into this again in case I missed something, because I really would like to be able to cross wheel / tire combos back and forth between my old and new Mopars. Possibly this weekend.

On another, similar subject, I have a late model Dodge Ram 1500 and at some point (no idea when) they've switched to some HUGE frickin' bolt pattern. I'd love to run some old school type wheels (Torque Thrusts or so) but no way. Can't find any nice, older style wheels for it. Seems like everything is gawdy, gothic, bazzilion little bolts, etc. Have to run the stock wheels on it. My last Dodge trucks were '60s and '70s models and then a Dakota. Sure wish someone would come out with an old Muscle Car type wheel in that big *** bolt pattern.

Production tolerances will vary. Holding the hub concentric to the bead is cheaper and easier than holding a bolt pattern to the bead. Some wheels may be 114.3mm and other could be 115.3mm. If someone can get a hold of the drawing, I can tell you what the min/max variation can be for the manufacture to make an in spec wheel.

O.K., the curiosity got the best of me and I pulled a spare wheel/tire from storage. Measuring from the back side which is totally flat; from the center of one lug hole; across the center hole and to the center of the opposing lug hole; it "eyeballs" at 4 and 3/8 inches. Now that's not a perfect measurement, but it is VERY close. 4 and 1/2 inches is definately too big. Anyone know roughly what that converts to in mm? I'd be curious how close that is to some of the mm measurements that have been thrown out there for the LX bolt circle and the 4.5 conversion to mm.

I don't know what else to say, other than I just reconfirmed that I cannot swap wheels/tire from my old Mopar to my new one and vice versa...

Tim1932 said:

I have a 1970 Duster converted to the LBP and was wondering if 2011 Challenger wheels would fit The wheels are 18" an take the 235/55/18 tire. Not sure of the back spacing on them or if it is even the correct 5x4 1/2 pattern.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Thanks.

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Bolt pattern WILL work if you have disk brakes. Don't remember back spacing, but I'm pretty certain you will need spacers

If you wanna put stupid looking wheels on your classic car, just buy wheels with the proper bolt pattern.

Cuda SRT8 said:

Dion,
I don't take offense to your posts and I hope you don't take offense to mine. I'm aware posts and emails can come across different than they were meant, so I'm cool.

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No offense taken on my part.

The center to center distance across the pattern (2 spaces apart) for the 4.5" pattern is 4.2798" and for the 115mm pattern it is 4.3060" for a difference of .0262" or less than a 1/32". And measuring center to center on a hole is really hard to do and get an accurate number. You can get closer by using an edge to edge of the holes method, but you are still dependant on how close you actually get to the center of the hole.

Do you have access to a printer? I could try and make up a .pdf file with some (potentially) accurate lines and circles for both patterns you could maybe use to gauge things. Just an idea.

Or if you have a method of accurately laying out some distances to build your own gauge, you could use the above numbers to make 2 different length sticks or something that you could use to eyeball things and compare.

Best check is still a hole to hole gauge like a tire shop or wrecking yard would have. The one I used had rubber cones that centered up the holes so I could see one gauge riding up on side and the other centered up on both. That also eliminates the issue of a tape sliding when you move to look at the other hole to see what the measurement it since you can't hook a tape end over anything.

Really need to have both length available to accurately gauge things, too. It's easy to think you have the right one if you only compare it to one length, but having both makes it easier to figure out which is closer. A double blind would be even better where you make some sticks the accurate length and then mix them up so you don't know which is which, then measure the one that looks closest after you compare them to the pattern.

I think I will do up some little paper gauges and take with me this weekend. Bound to be a new Challenger or Charger somewhere that I can lay the gauges on.

Dion,
I'm not going to pursue it further at this point. I do remember putting one lug on and snugging it just enough for it to be centered, yet be able to pivot a little. With the one stud centered in the whole, ALL the rest of the studs could not be centered, by a fair amount. This indicates all the studs would be AT LEAST stressed, if not bent a little. No way I would ever run a wheel like that. However, everyone has different standards as to what's safe and acceptable as indicated by MoparDaddy's comment above. To each his own. Just hope no one ever gets hurt, but that we'll probably never know.

Oh, and as I mentioned earlier, if you were mis-matching these bolt circles on a mag wheel / lug style that has the long shank (instead of tapered nut) you would only be able to get one lug on and none of the rest. There is that much difference...

That's fine, as long as it is understood that I am in no way saying that my standard is to run a wheel that is off a little bit. I don't suggest that at all. I am disagreeing (in a friendly way) with your conclusions, but I'm not arguing that it's ok to turn a blind eye to it.

BTW, MoparDaddy has worked on modern Mopars for a living and posted that they are a 4.5" bolt pattern. He isn't saying it is acceptable to be off a little either. I linked to a post of his earlier in this thread (towards the bottom of page 1).

MoparDaddy, you made a comment about getting a book out in the thread I linked, any chance you have some definitive Chrysler literature to close this subject?

Cuda SRT8 said:

O.K., the curiosity got the best of me and I pulled a spare wheel/tire from storage. Measuring from the back side which is totally flat; from the center of one lug hole; across the center hole and to the center of the opposing lug hole; it "eyeballs" at 4 and 3/8 inches. Now that's not a perfect measurement, but it is VERY close. 4 and 1/2 inches is definately too big. Anyone know roughly what that converts to in mm? I'd be curious how close that is to some of the mm measurements that have been thrown out there for the LX bolt circle and the 4.5 conversion to mm.

I don't know what else to say, other than I just reconfirmed that I cannot swap wheels/tire from my old Mopar to my new one and vice versa...

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Just for future reference, you don't measure the holes center to center. You measure them center to far edge. -pauly
http://www.americanracingwheelsinfo.com/bolt_pattern.htm

DionR said:

That's fine, as long as it is understood that I am in no way saying that my standard is to run a wheel that is off a little bit. I don't suggest that at all. I am disagreeing (in a friendly way) with your conclusions, but I'm not arguing that it's ok to turn a blind eye to it.

BTW, MoparDaddy has worked on modern Mopars for a living and posted that they are a 4.5" bolt pattern. He isn't saying it is acceptable to be off a little either. I linked to a post of his earlier in this thread (towards the bottom of page 1).

MoparDaddy, you made a comment about getting a book out in the thread I linked, any chance you have some definitive Chrysler literature to close this subject?

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Yes, I forgot to post. 2011-2013 is 5x115. However. My friends 2012 charger has 20" wheels that are 5x4.5. They have no vibration. No bent studs. Not even a couple buggered up threads. For the 8months the wheels have been on the car, he has also used aluminum lug nuts. This is a car that goes from the four corners, up to Denver on a weekly basis and gets driven the $hit out of at that. We have also done this with several other customer cars, agreeing to and acknowledging the difference in bolt patter of course.

MoparDaddy said:

2011-2013 is 5x115.

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Do you have any documentation? Not challenging you, but you mentioned a book or something and I was hoping you would have something from Chrysler that showed a dimension or something. Just asking.

DionR said:

Do you have any documentation? Not challenging you, but you mentioned a book or something and I was hoping you would have something from Chrysler that showed a dimension or something. Just asking.

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No. It was a tire/wheel guide essentially. I don't remember the brand name. It showed bolt pattern, offset/ backspacing/ OE and plus size tire sizing,I just opened it up and read what I needed to know. We did keep bolt pattern measuring tools on hand that we also used.

Sorry I dropped this, wasn't intentional.

I made up a little template and it seemed to work well, when it was a stud, but not so well on the end of a lug nut. Not enough to get a good reference and measure from.

I was hoping to try it out at a local car show, but only found one car to try and the guy was a jerk. Ended up stopping at the local Dodge dealer and trying to measure several cars. The only conclusion I came away with was that my little template wasn't good enough. Wasn't able to figure anything out, came up with some that I thought were 4.5, and others that looked to be 115mm. It was a worthless endeavor (other than absolutely falling in love with a dark Grey RT Challenger ).

Spend several days looking on the internet, trying to find someone with some credentials to shed some light on this. Really like to find a factory blueprint showing what the intended dimensions are, rather than what I am measuring. Tried the Brembo website, they have some really detailed drawings of their rotors, and for the LC/LX/LY cars, they show 115mm. Found one guy claiming to be Boyd Coddington Jr (not that he isn't, just saying the anyone can claim anything they want on the internet), who posted that he worked for Weld Wheels and that it is definitely 115mm. But most everything I look at on RockAuto.com that shows bolt pattern info show 4.5".

All I know for certain is the steel wheels I measured myself where certainly 4.5". But there is too much mystery in regards to the bolt pattern, so I am hereby pulling my opinion. I don't know what it is, and am tired of thinking about it.

The really funny thing to me is, I don't even want to run the wheels. Mopar seems to have a problem with anything much over 7.5" in a 17" or 18" wheel, which is just too narrow for me. But I am interested in the truth, and thought I had a handle on this. I'm not convinced it isn't 4.5", but I can't find enough evidence to support it so I am dropping this into the "who-knows" pile.

I'm out.

MoparDaddy said:

Yes, I forgot to post. 2011-2013 is 5x115. However. My friends 2012 charger has 20" wheels that are 5x4.5. They have no vibration. No bent studs. Not even a couple buggered up threads. For the 8months the wheels have been on the car, he has also used aluminum lug nuts. This is a car that goes from the four corners, up to Denver on a weekly basis and gets driven the $hit out of at that. We have also done this with several other customer cars, agreeing to and acknowledging the difference in bolt patter of course.

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This right here....