ZedZilla

Does anyone know of a way to make the track wider to accomodate a wide body kit on the zx. I know that there are wheel spacers you can use to make the foot print wider but to what extent. e.g, if you wanted to have the wheels protrude a few inches past the stock wheelwell how do you do it safely and practicaly, while still maintining the car as a daily driver etc...any input would be much appreciated.

Bleach

A wider wheel will still keep some of the upward pressure on the inside area of the wheel. Having a wheel sticking out like that is hard on the hubs and bearings. I'm not sure what is going to go out first... but be careful. You can't go too extreme, but a typical FWD wheel spacer and some 17x8 inch rims on the front might be ok. 17x10 in the back. Then get wide tires.

ZedZilla

fair enough. If I remember correctly those spacers are about 1 3/4" thick or so. Now does that mean that they actualy add to the width of the stock hub when installed? Being the case then if one was to get the usual Honda rims 4x100 (which are usually not the deep dish kind and sit flush with the outside edge of the lugs) would that not defeat the purpose of getting the spacers in the first place? or can you get rims in that bolt pattern being the deep dish kind, hence the wheel lip actualy sits past the outside edge of the lugnuts. Which would be just grand if possible. Also some wheels are specified for "front wheel drive" and others for "rear wheel drive" would there be any issues with using the front wheel drive (Honda) rims on the Z?

So many questions so little time.

Dorifto

You can get deep dish wheels for FWD - my friend has deep dish wheels (brand unknown, something Canadian though) on his '92 Civic 4-door. The FWD or RWD designation is simply referring to the offset of the wheels. FWD's generally need more area behind the mounting hub for suspension clearance, etc, whereas the RWD outfit usually doesn't. There's really no difference than - as I said - offset.
Hope this helps,
-Dave

Bleach

I was talking about getting RWD offset wheels and using the Honda spacer to push the wheels out an inch. So you would have a much harder time finding the wheels you want and they would cost a lot! But that's what you want.
The 8 and 10 inch wide wheels would be at the fender lip or under it on stock fenders. Then the spacer pushes it outward more to fill your widebody kit.

The spacer does bolt onto the hub and then has four bolts of it's own for the wheel. So in essence it does extend the hub itself. It is much more solid of a mounting than having longer studs with a slip-on "spacer". I would not recomend those. Especially in your case with what you're trying to accomplish.

ZedZilla

Bleach, your explanation does clear it up for me quite a bit. Dave, thanks for the answers on both my questions (ignition/steering lock problem). You are both very knowledgable. hey thx to both you guys for the info.

If I do it it will be later on when I have the rest of the details all worked out. I know there is extensive work to be done to the body when doing one of those conversions and frankly I haven't seen a Z with such a conversion to make up my mind about it. Plus I dont know how a 2+2 would look like with the widebody conversion. At some point I will hit the drawing pad and see what I come up with.

icice9

if you want a custom set up you can do what the guys from japan did.. they used the rear suspension from a Z32 or the skyline R32.. from what they told me the mounting holes for the suspension are very close to what the stock 280ZX are.. when i was in LA i took a few shots of thier suspension set up.. with that set up they pushed out the wheels ablut 3 to 4 inches out further then the stock set up..

heres some pics

(Z32 rear suspension in a S130)

ZedZilla

Wow! that looks very interesting. now I wonder what they meant by being "real close". I wonder how much modification they needed to do before the setup was complete. Do you have any other info on these guys? how to get a hold of them etc...judging by the pics there does not seem to be any custom mods there but hard to tell.

thanks much for the info. BTW your car is probably the best ZX I've seen. Shows how much thought you've put into making it look that good. But I'm sure you've heard that a couple of times by now. Sure sets the bar for the rest of us.

Ali