Benny

Will the body have to be lowered? Drop your opinions on me.

Harrier

The body doesn't have to be, but it looks a lot nicer if you do drop it on 18s. Even if you were to upgrade to 19s or even 20s, a small drop makes a world of a difference in terms of looks. The GS has a LOT of gap under the wheel well, which can look pronounced with larger wheels. Drop maybe an inch or a bit more with 18s.

RacingAristo

It's better to lower your car if you upgrade to 18". One main reason is when you put larger rims, the car body would be higher than stock, therefore the center of gravity is higher and your car wouldn't be stable. Second is that for the look. eliminate the ugly tire gap.

biggie27

I have 18" rims on my car and it doesn't look half bad when you put them on the stock suspension but it looks alot better when you lower it and if you want to eliminate the wheel gap and have a cumfy ride go with 18" 245/45 tyres this will eliminate the gap with a L-tuned suspension thats what I had on my car and it looked pretty good IMO

Wheels Boutique

I THINK YOU SHOULD DEFINETLY DROP IT BUT WITH THE 18'S EVEN IF YOU DROP IT YOU WILL STILL HAVE A GAP JUST NOT SO BIG AND IT WILL HANDLE MUCH BETTER

RacingAristo

Depends on how many inches you would like to drop. For Eibach/Ltuned, that is about 1 to 1.2 inch. For H&R, that is about 1.5 to 1.75 inches. (?) For more drop, you have to put on the coilover.

mch35types

you gotta go at least 19 on a gs

RealMarty

I've pondered this since seeing this post a while ago and I can't figure out why using a larger rim size will raise the height of the car.

From what I've read, in most cases the new rim is fitted with a lower cross section tire -- I thought that was done to maintain the original axle height and keep things like the speedometer accuracy fairly close.

What am I missing here?

Benny

Thanks for the opinions. I would like to hear an argument to realmarty's thoughts. it is not like i am putting 18" rims on the car with 235 75 r18 truck tires.

Black_IS300

I would drop it for sure. Do it for performance and looks....get rid of that tire gap! I think realmarty is right but the key word is "fairly close" Your car might sit a touch higher but I really dont think it would mess up the stability of you car. I went from 17's to 18's on my car and it was a before I got my coilovers. My car still felt stable and handled the same.. so you dont have to worry about that. But you should lower it anyway

bitkahuna

iTrader: (20)

You're not missing anything, Marty, you're right.

Some people do put high profile tires on big rims and therefore have an overall larger wheel/tire diameter than stock, which would raise the case (a bit).

My 235/40/18s on the front are almost exactly the same size as the 235/45/17s.

I will probably go to 245/40/18s next time though, because I don't mind being 1% off on the speedo to fill the wheel wells a bit better.