Another 17" LX Wheel Thread

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1975abody

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Had a 70 mph blowout on the freeway with one of the 14" Unitoyal Tiger Paws on the daily driver Scamp. As I was changing the tire on the side of the freeway, I thought hmmm maybe now is a good time to start shopping for the 17" wheel/tire options I've been pondering for several months.

So I took the 18" space saver spare out the wife's 2012 300 and mounted it up.

I know there's been much debate about the bolt pattern of LX wheels, but they sure look like 4.5" spacing with the correct register size too.

I ordered a 939-137 Dorman replacement wheel to determine what size tire I will need. Stay tuned.
 
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Some are 5x114.3, which is the same as 5x4.5”.

Later ones are 5x115, which is NOT the same. I don’t know exactly what year the change happened, but all the new stuff is 5x115.
 
Summit calls them out as 5x4.5, for up to model year 2011,but the wheels on the wife’s 2012 certainly appear to fit perfectly on the Scamp,so we’ll see....
 
run 3 more of those, painted body color with some sort of trim ring and chrome nuts, then slam it. :)
 
Just some metric conversion info. .0393701 is the conversion number. It gets rounded up to .04 by most users. I use the whole number. Either multiply, or divide.
Dave
 
Fitting up a tire size now. Made a cardboard template 13" from the center of the hub to get an idea of the clearance there would be with a 26" tall tire. It's a no go on the rear of the front fender lip as it sweeps through. The front edge of the fender has 1/4" of clearance. Was hoping to go with a 26" tire to avoid the rubber band look.

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I ran 225/60/15's on my '74 Duster, they're 25.6" tall. It was close, but nothing hit. 26" is usually the upper limit for tire height unless your run really narrow tires with a lot of backspace, or modify the front fender openings.

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I would bet with the additional backspace that those 17x7's have (4.8") that you could run 225/50/17's. Those are 25.9" tall. You might have to make some minor adjustments to the fenders, but maybe not. It's too bad they're 17x7's, if they were 17x7.5's you could run 245/45/17's up there.
 
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LX guys regularly swap wheels from early LX to later and back and forth. I'm going to bet that the .7MM ( if thats even legit) is hardly measurable across a bolt circle.
In inches we're talking about .027559 that is divided across the circle. Now I don't know the true diameter of the circle created by 4.5 pattern, since its measured to the outside of the adjacent stud. but even at 4.5 inches...you're talking about .01377953 per side. aka each stud being moved in 3 sheets of papers worth...

Now I either just sounded semi-intelligent...or someone is going to school me on how "sheets of paper" is not a measurement.lol
 
According to my measurements it certainly appears that 25" is the max that will fit, unless I'm not taking something into account when I'm measuring.
Maybe I will stop at a roadside tire shop and see if they have any 225/50 take offs that I could throw on before buying new tires.
I'm anticipating needing spacers for the rear, to try and match the track width of the front.
 
LX guys regularly swap wheels from early LX to later and back and forth. I'm going to bet that the .7MM ( if thats even legit) is hardly measurable across a bolt circle.
In inches we're talking about .027559 that is divided across the circle. Now I don't know the true diameter of the circle created by 4.5 pattern, since its measured to the outside of the adjacent stud. but even at 4.5 inches...you're talking about .01377953 per side. aka each stud being moved in 3 sheets of papers worth...

Now I either just sounded semi-intelligent...or someone is going to school me on how "sheets of paper" is not a measurement.lol
stand by , some know it all , 49 year machinist will come along and tell you that .0000000003 is just not correct and it won't work...
I work within .0005 tolerances all day and 114.3 to 115 is less than the run - out tolerances of the rim itself.
 
LX guys regularly swap wheels from early LX to later and back and forth. I'm going to bet that the .7MM ( if thats even legit) is hardly measurable across a bolt circle.
In inches we're talking about .027559 that is divided across the circle. Now I don't know the true diameter of the circle created by 4.5 pattern, since its measured to the outside of the adjacent stud. but even at 4.5 inches...you're talking about .01377953 per side. aka each stud being moved in 3 sheets of papers worth...

Now I either just sounded semi-intelligent...or someone is going to school me on how "sheets of paper" is not a measurement.lol

stand by , some know it all , 49 year machinist will come along and tell you that .0000000003 is just not correct and it won't work...
I work within .0005 tolerances all day and 114.3 to 115 is less than the run - out tolerances of the rim itself.

First off, the replacement wheel he ordered is listed as a 5x4.5”, so this whole 5x115 vs 5x4.5” thing is moot for the OP, he has the right rims.

As for the 5x115 wheels on a 5x114.3 (4.5”) pattern, sure, the difference is pretty small. Someone even mentioned it’s less than the runout tolerance on the wheel. Which is an important thing to note, because everything has tolerances. The hub, the studs, the wheel, all of it. And those tolerances are normally made to work together. There’s a reason that run out tolerance is what it is. A 5x4.5” wheel works with the tolerances on a 5x4.5” hub pattern. A 5x115 pattern wheel is meant to have tolerances that work with the tolerances on a 5x115 hub.

So, even if the difference from 5x4.5” to 5x115 is small, when you put a within tolerance slightly oversized 5x115 wheel on a within tolerance slightly undersized 5x4.5” pattern hub, you get a bigger difference. Maybe one that’s enough to side load the studs?

Yeah, there are people out there running 5x115 pattern wheels on 5x4.5” pattern hubs. There are also people out there eating tide pods. Doesn’t mean it’s a good idea.

Me, personally, I’m going to run wheels that have the same pattern as my car. Because the wheel tolerances on all the aftermarket wheels are probably big enough already.
 
Took bluNblu's advice and picked up a junk 225/50/17. Good all around except for the rears, which are only about 3/16" off of the leaf springs. Ordered a set of 1" spacers, so it should all be good.

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Will probably drop the torsion bars an inch or so.

If you drop the ride height a full inch with the torsion bars, you’ll need larger diameter torsion bars. Otherwise you’ll be riding around on the bump stops all the time.

And, why a 1” spacer when a 1/4” spacer would have worked just fine? Moving those tires out a full inch will probably put them borderline too close to the quarters. You need at least a 1/2” of clearance there.
 
I have 1.03 tb's. I hung a plumb bob off of the rear fender lip and measured to the sidewall and I have 2" so I will have 1.1875" to the tire and 1" to the fender lip with a 1" spacer.
 
I have 1.03 tb's. I hung a plumb bob off of the rear fender lip and measured to the sidewall and I have 2" so I will have 1.1875" to the tire and 1" to the fender lip with a 1" spacer.

Oops. Yeah those tires are skinnier than I remember them being, that works out right for the math with the actual section width instead of my apparently faulty memory.

With 1.03” bars you can probably pull off that amount of drop. Might try a dab of grease on the tops of your bump stops when yo get the ride height you want to see if anything is bottoming out though.
 
just finished putting the wheels,tires and Bilsteins on. As I suspected I Acould have easily gone wider on the tires,but I could not not any cheap wheels wider than 7".

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So recap would be: stock replacement Dorman Wheel 17"x7" with 4.5 bolt circle dia. and 225/50/17 tires. 1" wheel spacer on the rears. Would this be correct? It looks great by the way and seems to be an easy and inexpensive way to step up to 17" wheels.
 
So recap would be: stock replacement Dorman Wheel 17"x7" with 4.5 bolt circle dia. and 225/50/17 tires. 1" wheel spacer on the rears. Would this be correct? It looks great by the way and seems to be an easy and inexpensive way to step up to 17" wheels.

Correct. Wheels are part number
939-137 from Summit. Tires,lug nuts and spacers were from Amazon. This was the absolute cheapest way I found to get 17's on the car.
 
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