I was at the Burgerking parking lot yesterday to observe people's SCION. While I was bit disappointed to see there were no modified xA (at least while I was there), but felt good that a lot of people loved SCION. I am still looking for wheels and have a question. What do you think about using different offset wheels for front and rear? +42 would be all right for front, but rear needs +35. Any problems with this kind of ideas?

 

From what Van had been saying.. you could actually get away with a 9.5 in the back with a offset that is in the teens, but that of course isn't going to be a good street car. +2x offset would be nice in the back.

 

Staggered offsets will look very clean on the xB. The offset itself will be determined by the width of the wheels since ET35 on a 7½ inch wide wheel will sit differently than an 8½ inch with ET35. From the test fit I did on my xB, it looks like a 7.5" wide wheel with ET35 in the front and a 7.5" wide wheel with ET20-25 in the rear will make it flush front and back. You will lose the ability to rotate your tires though is you go with staggered offsets. The other way to do it is to get the same offset wheels all around and use a set of custom H&R spacers in the rear. This way you can still rotate... Anyways, just a thought...

 

Also remember that with most quality wheels, you can order wheels with different disks. Since the rear uses drum brakes, you can get away with a super low disk. If you have a two wheel of the same exact width and offset, the one with the lower disk will always have a little more lip. Of course, another downside to running staggered disks is that you won't be able to rotate the wheels also because the low disk wheels will interfere with your front calipers. Another consideration....

 

disks?

 

Disk represents the thickness of the mounting pad of the wheel. The mounting pad is the center part of the wheel where it attaches to the hub of your car, and where the lug nuts go into. The thicker the mounting pad/higher the disk, the further the spokes are pushed outwards, away from stuff like big brake calipers. And the thinner the mounting pad/lower the disk, the further in the spokes are. So imagine that you have two wheels of the same width, and same offset, placing the face of the mounting pad where it contacts the hub in the same location. The wheel with the higher disk has a thicker pad, which moves the spokes outwards, which in turn, means that there is less lip than the same width, same offset wheel in a lower disk.

This is why if you run, for example, a Work Euroline FS wheel in the recommended 18x.75" +32mm fitment in an A disk (higher disk to clear the brake caliper) in front, and the O disk (lower disk that you can run because of rear drums) in back, the rear, even though it is the same width and offset, will have right around 10mm more lip. The problem, again, is that you won't be able to rotate the tires with wheels from front to back because the lower disk wheels won't fit with the brake calipers in front. This may all seem a little confusing, and it really does help to have a diagram to show exactly how wheels are measured... argh, I still need to put up the wheel fitment FAQ!