drurywoodson

I'm a newbie to suspension mods, and I was wondering if one of the experts out there could explain the tradeoffs involved in wheel selection or point me to a good FAQ.

I drive an Rx300, and I want to improve the cornering without slowing the car down or ruining my ride. I'm not particularly interested in whether a 20" wheel "looks" better than an 18". I just want the best balance of performance, handling, and comfort.

Here are my questions:

1) I've seen a lot of posts about which brands are good, and which are crap, but I haven't seen anyone explain what makes a crap brand crap? Do they break, bend, slow the car down, or just look bad?

2) How much of a difference in 0-60 times does a 5 or 10 lb difference per wheel really make? Does anyone have any real life examples?

3) Does going to 20" wheels improve the handling because you are reducing the sidewall flex, or because you are increasing the rotational inertia, or both? Are there any other physics effects I should be aware of?

4) Are there any significant tradeoffs when specifying wheel width? Are there significant differences between a 7.5 and a 9.0?


--drury

'00 Rx300
Way too stock for way too long!

Manaray

I am working on a FAQ of sorts...just have 1000 projects going so I haven't been able to work on it as much lately...though it's about 70% finished...

1) Crap brands are crap for many reasons. Build quality, ugly design, knock-off designs, over price for what they are, etc., etc....everyone has "their" list of what is a crap brand and what isn't...

2) It does make a difference, but I don't have hard numbers...Dennis? GS4Power?

3) Sidewall flex is a major part...as for rotational inertia helping, that you'd have to ask someone like GS4Power...he's into that kind thing!

4) A wide wheel will let you have wider tires...though on a SUV, a "bubbled" sidewall look is the "correct" look it seems...

Even on your stock setup, if you put low profile tires on it, it would handle a lot better...if you lowered your car, it would handle a lot better...The RX is high. It's center of gravity is high, therefore, it's not going to handle like a IS300 (though it can made to do so!)

Making your RX handle better w/o making your ride any worse isn't something I DON'T have ACTUAL experience on so please take the info with a grain of salt...

My guesstimation is that you can run some "higher performance" tires that may have stiffer sidewalls (and shorter sidewalls) which will hurt the ride a little but you may be able to live with it...you might have to be the "pioneer"...

It's hard to get that "Cadillac ride" with "Supra handling"...you can't have the best of both worlds...it's all about compromise...