VANAGON archives -- March 2005, week 1 (#386)

Date: Sun, 6 Mar 2005 07:21:16 -0800 Reply-To: TJ Hannink <tjhannink@YAHOO.COM> Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com> Comments: DomainKeys? See http://antispam.yahoo.com/domainkeys From: TJ Hannink <tjhannink@YAHOO.COM> Subject: Re: [syncro.org] Wheel offset Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

On Sat, 5 Mar 2005 15:12:25 -0800, mark drillock wrote:

> VW did not make the 14x6 alloys with a different ET than the 14x5.5 > steels to keep the rims from rubbing. They did it to keep the wider > tires from rubbing.

I happened to be rotating the tires and checking the front-end alignment on Goldibox this morning and decided to do some checking. I bolted on a stock steel 14" wheel (less tire) 5.5" wide with 38mm of offset to the front right hub and measured the clearance between the inner edge of the wheel and the spindle and found 20/64" or 8mm of clearance.

While a 14"x 6" wide ET38 wheel would (just) fit without rubbing, there would be less than 1/8" of clearance. I would guess that VW decreased the offset of the 6" wide alloy wheel in order to keep the same amount of clearance that the steel wheel had, and that having the proper amount of clearance was more important than having the 'correct' offset. AFAIK, they made no changes to the front suspension when they added the alloy wheel option so decreasing the ET by 8-mm must not have been a critical problem.

While I was at it, I built a test jig and measured the clearances of wheel diameters up to 19" relative to the front spindle/control arm using the 5.5" ET-38 inside edge as a reference point.

They are as follows:

15" 53/64" 21mm 16" 63/64" 25mm 17" 66/64" 26mm 18" 100/64" 38mm 19" 168/64" 67mm

An excel geek should be able to use these numbers and, by modifying wheel width and offset, calculate the amount of clearance a given wheel will have and the width of spacers required (if any) for the wheel to clear the 2wd front spindle/upper control arm.

Remember that these numbers are for wheel clearance only and only for the front of the 2wd Vanagon; Use at your own risk!

Thanks,

TJ Hannink Goldibox - 1987 Vanagon Camper, Wolfsburg Edition 1981 Bluebird Wanderlodge, FC-33 Winter Park, Florida http://home.earthlink.net/~tjhannink/ http://groups.yahoo.com/group/wolfsburg_campers http://groups.yahoo.com/group/wanderlodge FAVOR website: http://home.earthlink.net/~clubvanagon __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com

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