245/60/14 on stock rally wheels
I know, old thread..................
But isn't it the opposite? Trying to understand. Would little backspace not put you further away from the springs and vice versa?
Yes, you’re correct. Too much backspacing puts the tires on the springs, too little puts the tires into the quarters.
I have been using 245-60-14s on my 3 1970 Darts for 30 years. One of them uses stock 5.5 inch rallye rims with an unaltered rear suspension. perhaps 70,000 miles this way and 3 sets of BFG TA radials. Never had any issues, despite the howling of some folks here that my demise is imminent.
The other 2 Darts use 14x7 inch aftermarket rallyes out back that have the additional 1.5 inches of rim in the inside of the rim. I wanted the rims to look the same from the outside front to back. This was only possible by using a 3/4 inch spring relocation kit. Mine were both Mopar Performance kits although there are other versions out there. Again no issues despite many tens of thousands of miles on one of the cars (this one too ran 245-60-14s on stock rims with stock leaf location for over a decade and many many miles before the conversion).
The tires are tight in both set ups - I wouldn't do this if I were doing handling competitions.
By the way, I also use 205-70-14s up front as they are the closest 70 series in terms of sidewall height. I have never had fitment issues, but tried 215s and had to do some front fender adjustments (front lip strut).
Lol. No one said you'd die, now who's being overly dramatic? Cramming a 245/60/14 on a 5.5" rim is just stupid. Can you do it? Sure. It will distort the tread, so you'll have to run less air pressure to get a proper contact patch. And the stretch you put on the sidewalls paired with the lower tire pressures will result in absolutely
lousy handling. Maximizing handling performance means running the widest recommended rim for a given tire, not the narrowest.
Clearly though no one that cares about handling would run a 245/60/14 BFG T/A. Those big floppy sidewalls, on that narrow of a rim, would handle like absolute crap.
But they should fit easily on a '70+ Dart regardless of how you're using it, no spring offset should be necessary at all if the wheel specs are good. At the section those 245's only 9.8" wide, and a '70 Dart should have a good 11" from spring to uncut quarter lip (both of my '71's do). Which is plenty of room for a 245 with proper backspacing. Heck
@toolmanmike runs 255's on his.
The only reason to run a 245/60/14 on a 14x5.5" rim is because you're too cheap to do it right, and still want to brag that you've got a 245 on there. Even though it won't perform anywhere near a 245 with a proper width rim. All show, no go.
But really this isn't news, there's nothing high performance about a 245/60/14 anyway.
