~Stingray

Hey guys,

I will be getting a c7 as my daily soon and will need to get a set of winter wheels/tires. Is there any reason not to get the same size all around?

Its cheaper to get all the same but I didn't know if there was some special setup on the car that it shouldn't be. I can't really think of any assuming the tires are the same size in height.

Thanks.

stevebz06

I think the wheel selection from the factory is mostly for esthetics and you probably will be ok going with same sized wheels. I did it once with my C5 because of a shortage of race tires and I found that the car had pretty strong oversteer tendencies, but that was with pretty old tires and on a course that required the car to be constantly turning. The most important thing to keep the car manageable would be rear width.

Foosh

It's not for looks, the reason is for added grip. It's a relatively light RWD w/ 460 ft lbs. of torque. I wouldn't want to run around with the OEM front size on the rear, and the rear size won't fit on the front.

Maxpowers

^^^^

Agreed. Plus you'd be hard pressed to find rear wheels that are thinner with the right offsets.

~Stingray

I didnt' realize the tires were actually wider in the back. I thought it was the same tire with the exception of the side all height to accommodate the larger wheels.

The base originally came with 18/19 and a z51 came with 19/20. I thought that was for looks as the z51 didn't really add that much HP to the setup. So I figured 19"s all around would be good.

ssidekickbp

Z51 is more about handling then HP.

~Stingray

I gathered that from what Foosh was saying. But my point was the handling was adequate for the non-z51 at 18/19. No one complaining. The z51 didn't really add hp but made a better handling car because of various reasons, one being the wheel sizes increase. But that doesn't make the the smaller sizes bad choices; you not suddenly in much higher percentage bracket of loosing control of the car because of the wheels alone. At least not for a daily commute. Rocking 1.2g in a turn while racing, you would have an argument, but that is now what I am trying to figure out.

Example, you want to make better turns you might get a beefier sway bar. That doesn't mean that keeping the smaller one that came with corvette will cause you to loose control of the car.

Unless the offsets are really drastically different I don't understand how it woudl be so bad. I think I saw a guy selling 20" rims the other day on here as he use to run 20"s on all 4 spots. I am trying to understand the real issue to do the same size all around.

Hopefully I am explaining my confusion well here. As I don't see the issue. Foosh said the rears won't fit on the front, but other have had the same size on all 4 and have had no issues. I am trying to get the whole picture.

Dif

I understood it to be about the different diameters between the front and rear tires.
There needs to be a 1 inch difference in diameter, within a certain percentage, between front and rear tires respectively.
It has to do with the difference in revolutions per minute between the front and rear tires.
This info is received by the computer and has to do with handling, or something of the sort.
If you run all the same diameter tires it throws a suspension/handling warning ?
You can run all the same size wheels, but, the rear tires still have to be 1 inch taller than the fronts.
In Cold weather I run a second set of C6 18-19 wheels with A/S tires.
And with stock size tires ( same as Base C7 tires ), the tires are still the same Diameters as the 19-20 tires.
On the other hand, you can run tires that are taller than OEM front and rear.
But, they still need that 1 inch diameter difference respectively

owc6

Yes, as I understand it, it will confuse the car if your tire diameters, are too far off the difference offset front to back, and will throw errors/codes.

village idiot

diameter is for aesthetics. The best tire diameter is the smallest one that clears the brakes.
Width is for performance. Obviously, wider all around is better, but the front is probably narrower that the rear for steering feel and safety reasons (OEMs want the car to understeer). But yeah, in an ideal world, my GS would have 335's up front too.

6Speeder

Except that it's the best WHEEL diameter is the smallest that clears the brakes.

Motors5

I would not change anything dimension wise!


I have a Z51, magnetic shocks etc and many of the cars system is calibrated around the standard combination (Stability control, anti skid, all the driving modes - Weather, eco, touring, sport and track).


Of course there are tolerances but you cannot deviate too much before you go outside and the systems will fail or not function accordingly. I would say this is more critical during winter.


At a track day recently a person had put on rear tires that were 1/3 inch wider than stock and this worked well with the track settings (Wet/Dry/Sport1/Sport2 and Race). Where the limit is up or down, I don't know!


//Motors5

Eff A Ford

Staggered can mean 2 things. Different width tires/wheels front and back, or different diameter wheels/tires front and back.

Having the same diameter wheels front and rear is fine as long as the rear tires are 1" taller than the front.

Having the same width tires/wheels could negatively affect handling. I've seen plenty of posts about people asking why their car breaks the tires loose so easily on heavy acceleration, imagine how it would be with 245s or 255s in the rear.

spinkick

I think the car would have wider tires up front if it could; but you need to be able to turn

Eff A Ford

The Pontiac Grand Prix GXP had wider tires in front

spinkick

I'm in a grand sport, so I guess the stingray could be different

LIStingray

Not true, as the weight bias shifts from 55/45 F-R to about 45/55 F-R the rear tires need to get wider to keep up with the added weight that is required for cornering traction and braking. Which is why on a Camaro the tire widths are the same - they could fit 285's F&R on the Z51, but don't do so.