Advantage to staggered wheels

[GT-Rob]

I was just wondering if there were much performance benefits to going with a staggered wheel set up on a RWD car?


obviously the looks is nice, and running a wider tire in the back can help with traction, but is there noticeable performance gains in concern to track use? (road course)


Also, I may as well post in the same thread, but are 17s too big for track/street use on a gts-t? Im going to be looking for light weight but on a limited budget. I like the look of larger wheels, but am I slowing myself down much by not using 16s? Im basically seeing if I can hold off from buying R compound tires for a season and useing street tires on the track


thanks for any input. Im trying to shop for wheels and not sure where to start

[klys]

I'm not sure what you mean by stagered, cause I'm bilinugual but not yet a cunning lingual

but if you mean like a very open type of wheel, for track it car be useful has it will help cooling the brakes, I think 17" might help in that matter.

However with 17" your acceleration might be just a bit slower as you'll have more weight to accelerate at a futher distance from the center but really I think the advantage of 17's is you be able to run a bit lower profile tires which in turn should give you more stable cornering

hope this makes sense

[Ezzie]

Since you asked - here is my opinion. Spend the money on something other than wheels. Since you already have the 16" wheels, investing in 17" rims is not going to make enough of a difference to warrant the expense if you are on a tight budget. Invest in a decent set of tires (like Toyo Proxes RA-1's) and spend some bucks on your suspension in smart ways (such as bushings & alignment). Then spend money on getting in as many track days as possible - there is no substitute for seat time. Learning how to drive the car will gain you much better return on investment than spending big $$$ on performance mods. You will know when it is time to start buying go fast goodies after you become a competitive driver.

[GT-Rob]

heh yeah sorry I when I said I had a limited budget I just meant I didnt want to buy $4000 lightweight volks

I ran proxies and 712s last year (yes I went through both sets) and the toyos are a great tire, still havent decided what im going to run this spring but I dont cheap out.

[spd-dmn]

Too much stagger promotes understeer. This effect is compounded on cars with a lot of weight ahead of the front axle.

[canadianskyline]

For me, i ran 17x8 and 17x9 this whole season, and next year the car has some 18x10's going on the back, and the 17x9's are going to the front. Alot of my motive is that the car looks very good with a staggered setup, but with the amount of power im throwing down, i want to be able to put as wide of a tire in the back as physically possible to prevent oversteer coming out of corners when i roll onto the throttle. Another reason for this is that the skylines weight distribution is towards the front of the car, making them tail happy under hard cornering (the only time ive understeered my car was on very tight corners, on a real track setting it does nothing but oversteer) so a wider tire in the back keeps the back end in line.

As for the other comments about tires, im running dunlop fm901's on the front right now, and they are amazing, and they are a pretty good price too. I am going to falken azeni rt615's once those are toast though, ive driven on them before and they are a great tire (and also not too expensive).