Hi Brent:
Surprisingly, there were only two responses. The first was from someone
I had asked who wasn't (to my knowledge) on the list: His response
suggested that the reason the front track was wider was that the widest
track is the one that is going to steer the car--You want the car to
follow the front wheels, make the front track wider.
The other response was from Jim Leach (thanks Jim) who said that the
wider front track was caused when rootes changed from front drum to
front disc brakes--that it was not intentional. (this makes sense--I
looked at some info on the old drum braked Hillman Husky platform and
found that the front track was 49 inches and the rear was 48.5, which
dovetails with what Jim told me). Jim also advised that widening the
rear track to match the front would promote additional understeer.
Which wouldn't have been that much of a problem for me, as I was
thinking of adding a rear swaybar and beefing up the front bar.
As far as spacing the rear wheels out a bit, my first respondent says to
use longer studs and a spacer. Rick at Specialties says that he doesn't
have access to longer 7/16 NF studs, but pointed out that GM cars use
the same studs, but with different dimensions on the splined end. He
thought an auto part supplier might have access to longer wheel studs
but that, if the splines were larger than "ours" it would require
drilling larger holes in the hub to fit the studs. Which means not
being able to re-install the original studs if you want to get rid of
the spacers.
Since I'm currently running stock rims I was actually thinking of
building 1" or 1.25" aluminum spacers to compensate the 2.5" track
difference. I thought that since everything would be clamped in place
by the lug nuts there wouldn't be a need to go with larger diameter
wheel studs. Any thoughts out there?
I did look into having the rear wheels widened, but they'd have to cut
the centers out and weld on a new 5.5" rim. The advantage would be that
the wheel studs stay stock, and I can dictate (within reason) the
backspacing on the rim. The old trick of slicing the rim and welding in
a 'band' to widen it is, according to the wheel guy I spoke to, not as
safe as welding on an entirely new rim.
Reality check: I'll probably wind up doing neither, but it was
interesting finding this stuff out. Anybody actually done either of
these?
Regards
David Sosna
S4 GT V6
Brent Kasl wrote:
>
> What was the outcome of the message sent several days ago regarding the
> offset difference from the rear end Alpines to front end? Is it possible
> to space for alignment? Thanks Brent
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