Well, I am getting closer to finally putting the 17x9 snowflakes on my car. I ordered them back in November and they finally arrived to me sometime in late February. I just order them in the stock gold color since I knew I was going to be stripping them and refinishing them anyway.
So, I got to work, stripping them down, polishing them and repainting them. I went with a customs dark charcoal color to match the decals on my car.
And of course since I was doing custom anyway, I also went with some custom centercaps as well to go along with the whole "Black and Silver" theme to my car.
I also got my tires ordered in as well. Right now I just went with a cheap tire because I didn't know about sizes and how everything would look. So, I just got a cheap set to put on there to see how I liked them.
Ok, I know you are asking yourself why I went with a 255/50 size tire. I know they recommend a 275/40 tires, but the profile and size would look a little off and also I had concerns about how they would fit inside the wheel well. I also wanted to make sure that the different size rims and tires would not set off my speedometer by that much either. So I went online and spent alot of time researching tires and sizes and what would work or not. I found a little program online that you can plug in your original tire size and then the size of the tire you are looking to convert it to. It would give you all of the measurements and also an image representation of what the changes would be. When I looked at the 275/40 size tires, it seemed that they would be a little shorter than my original tires and might look funny in the wheel well. As you can see in the photos below, it would be smaller and also set off the speedometer by about 4mph.
So, I then looked at the different sizes and the 255/50 size tire would be a better match (or closer anyway) to what is on my car now. It also only sets off the speedometer by about 1mph.
So I figured I would try out this size and see how it looks. If I do not like the way they fit, I will change them. Probably some time this week I will be mounting the tires and taking some comparison photos shots to see what the difference in and how they look. I will also be checking out all of the clearance issues (if any) associated with the new sizes. I will be postings photos and let you know how it turns out in the end.