How Do I Know What Offset Will Fit My Car?

Put simply, to find if your wheels will fit your car, measure the distance from your wheel’s center point to where it is mounted. This is the offset. Add that to half your wheel’s width to find the back space and subtract it to find the front space. Compare this to your wheel well to see if it fits.

How do I know what offset I need for my car?

Measure the distance from the floor to the straight edge and divide by two. That calculates the centerline of the wheel. If the centerline number is smaller than the hub measurement, offset is positive; if it is larger, offset is negative.

How much offset can I have on my wheels?

Even if the tire and wheel have enough clearance, the wrong offset can decrease vehicle stability. Generally, with new wheels, you don’t want the new offset to be more than 5 millimeters different from the old offset.

How do I know if a rim will fit my car?

The two easiest ways are to check the sticker plate in your car, it should be located inside the driver side door, or look online for the vehicle specifications for your exact make and model. That should tell you the standard rim size.

Do I want negative or positive offset?

Easier to Fit Wider Tires
If you want to fit wider tires without having them stick out, positive offset rims will allow you to do just that. 4×4 owners will often choose positive offset wheels to avoid clearance issues.

Does it matter what offset on a wheel?

Wheel offset refers to how the wheels mount in your wheel wells, and as a result, how much space you have on either side of the wheel. It’s very important to get this right, because a wheel with the wrong offset can rub and cause problems with your suspension, brakes, and even body parts, like fenders.

What happens if you change wheel offset?

Offset equals 0.5 (tire or wheel width) minus the distance from the mounting surface to the tire or rim edge. Altering offsets also changes track widths. Reduced offsets result in larger track widths. This can improve cornering speeds by reducing lateral load transfer from the inside tires to the outside tires.

Is a 5mm offset difference OK?

If the new wheels are the same width, the new offset should ideally be within 5mm of the old offset in either direction. If offset must be substantially different, avoid using more positive offset at all costs.

How do you match a tire to rim size?

Width and diameter are the two factors that determine tire and rim compatibility. For diameter you’ll need to be sure that your tires and wheels are an exact match, e.g. a 215/65R17 tire will only fit on a 17″ diameter wheel. There’s a bit more flexibility when it comes to wheel widths.

How big of a rim can I put on my car?

To keep the suspension and speedometer functioning correctly, both the stock diameter and width of the wheels and tires needs to be maintained. As a general rule of thumb, it’s safe to fit a tire up to 20 millimeters wider than stock on the original rim.

Can I put a different size rim on my car?

Once you choose a tire size for your vehicle, you’ll want to stick with that size when you buy replacements. The reason for this is that a differently sized tire can confuse your speedometer and even cause damage to your vehicle’s anti-lock braking systems and stability system calibrations.

What happens if you have too much negative offset?

If the offset is negative you will get more aggressive strain in return. It will help in increasing the steering wheel back with kick along with placing additional stress on the vehicle suspension. It will handle handling issues in a serious way.

What does 25mm offset mean?

Example 2: -25mm offset = The center of the wheel is 25 mm closer to the inside, or brake/caliper, of the wheel. This is often seen on concave wheels or large lipped wheels. This pushes the tire out toward the fender making it flush on your favorite static car.

Does positive offset stick out more?

A simple way to understand offset, is the lower the offset, the more the wheel will stick out, likewise, the higher the offset, the more the wheel will tuck in.

What does +20 offset mean?

The higher the number, the less lip there is on the wheel and the more forward the wheel face will be. A 20mm offset means the wheel face is more toward the outside of the vehicle than a 1mm offset.

What is wheel offset ET45?

For example, an ET45 wheel measurement has a positive offset of 45mm, which means that the mounting face is 45mm in front of the centre line. Conversely, a wheel with ET-12 will have a negative offset where the mounting face is 12mm behind the centre line of the wheel.

What does 40mm offset mean?

With the declared positive offset of 40, the wheel’s mounting pad is located 40mm from the center line, towards wheel’s front face, being 40mm from the center line position which is at 88.9mm.

Does changing wheel offset affect alignment?

Changing wheel size/offset will not affect the settings as they are, the wheels are aligned to the vehicle dependent upon the suspension design, which is in turn designed usually for a specific size and offset tire/rim combination and handling characteristics.

Do spacers add or remove offset?

Wheel spacers essentially increase the distance from the centre of the wheel to the hub, thus reducing positive offset. The lower number positive offset you achieve, you space your wheels out towards the fender or sometimes beyond the fender.

Is wheel offset better than spacers?

If you need a high-offset wheel style, then offset rims are better than spacers. Sometimes, wheel spacers are of importance to you. If changing wheel width, you have to consider new rims or proper spacers to make the offset correct. For those people who would like to keep the OEM rims, wheel spacers are the way to go.

Are spacers worse than offset rims?

Installing wheel spacers is no different than a set of low-offset wheels. Thus, they are not worse than offset wheels. There’re lots of good quality hub-centric spacers out there that are plenty strong.