thanks again to everyone who helped answer my questions in the general 1st gen xb forum that led to the purchase of my 06 today! even as i was waiting for the paperwork to be finalized i was thinking about new wheels.

i'd really like to avoid issues with rubbing or speedometer calibration so please chime in with your knowledge and opinions. i'd like to go with a larger diameter rim and get the appropriately sized tire to match the specs of the stock wheels. is this possible? what size rim and tire should i be looking for?

this is all i really want to do for now (and all i really have $$ for). no plans for lowering or any other suspension related mods. just want to upgrade the look of the wheels. thanks in advance for any replies.

btw, i'd really like to mimic this look:

 

how big do you want to go? those are teh TRD 18" wheels. dotn quote me but i think teh tires are 215/35. i could be wrong though. that tire will keep your in the 3% range though. (.8%)

 

forgive my newbiness i wanted to find out what rim/tire combo would equate to the overall size of the stock wheels. if i wanted to go with a 17" rim, what size tire should i be looking for so that the overall wheel is the same size as stock. sorry, i'm not a car person. just trying to learn here. thanks for replying.

 

Here are the (very) basic sizes for the xB.

15" - 60 series
16" - 50
17" - 40
18" - 35

I personally run a 205/40/17 and it's pretty dead-on, only a .2" difference from stock.

Check out this wheel/tire calculator, it's very useful.
http://www.miata.net/garage/tirecalc.html

 

awesome! thanks for the info. i'm assuming the .2" difference won't effect the calibration of the speedo and odo?

 

Not much. Maybe a hair. My speedo generally reads within 1-2mph of my GPS, so it's within a reasonable range.

 

so according to http://www.discounttire.com/dtcs/infoTireMath.dos , if i go with a 215 40 17 tire and the speedometer reads 65mph, i'll actually be going 65.09mph. seems like an acceptable overage. is the 215 width compared to the stock 185 a significant enough of a change to cause rubbing issues? i'm assuming the rim will have something to do with that. what should i be looking for in a rim that would help me avoid that?

 

Find some options... Anything lower than 40 but higher than 20 will put you in an acceptable range. Wheel offset has more to do with rubbing. But assuming a 215 on a 7.5" wheel with a reasonable offset will be fine.

 

so it sounds like the 215 40 17 will work? what kind of offset should i be looking for going to the wider tire? i'm assuming it has to be somewhat positive for the tire to clear the inside of the wheel well?

 

215 is ideal on a 7.5" wheel... lemme dig up a pic of when I was on my TRDs. They were 215/35/18 with a 40 offset.

 

Okay, here's 215/35/15


Currently I'm running a 205/40/17 on a 7" wide wheel (I think the offset is 38) And in both these pics, I have a 10mm hubspacer, which decreases the rear offset by 10.

 

nice. so they're similar to the pic i posted above? no problems with rubbing? where did you get the wheels when you bought them?

 

I've gotten all of my wheels from the community... (friends, scionlife, etc)... never had any rubbing. The last pic is my 3rd and favorite (so far) set.

 

this is beautiful.

 

Appreciate it. Those were my first set of wheels. Looked nice, but the 35 series and Chicago streets don't get along too well.

 

i hear ya. nothing like that to worry about here in socal. out of curiosity what'd ya do with the old wheels?

 

Flipped em on craigslist.

 

Also... you should consider lowering. 18" wheels with stock suspension looks kinda strange.

 

i ran a 205/40 on my 17x7's, and honestly i wish i had gotten 215/40 or 205/45 cuz i hated the ride

 

why? how did it feel?