Larry:
The change is going to be negligible. On the back of the car, the tire
doesn't have anywhere to go. Too much offset and you hit the fender, not
enough and you hit the bump stop bulge. No matter what you do, the rear
wheel location is going to be about the same. If you go with a
"Datsun/Nissan offset" wheel, you are talking about a 1/2'-1" positive
offset on the front of the car. This is nothing. Wheel bearing loading is
going to be a tiny bit higher, but overall the type of tire you run is going
to make much of a difference.
Installing American made + offset mags on modified wire wheel rear end 68-
MGBs was very common back in the 70-80s. It was a cheap and easy way to get
far better handling out of a wire wheel car. I did this to my 70 MGB back
in 1980 and ran it at track and rally events for years on 195/60 14 rubber.
In those days cheap Minilite repro rims were not available, and all the
american alloy wheels had + offset and would tend to rub on a steel wheel
rear. And boy! do I remember those tubular lug nuts with washers, that
would gall in the lug holes.
You might want to talk to some of the V8 MGB crowd, as the rear end you are
looking for is one of the most important bits to making the V8 conversion
work. There is a lot of development already done on the V8 list. At MG2002
I saw an impressive setup that used a Chevy S10 housing fitted with Z28
limited slip and disc brakes.
I'll let you know how things go when we try fitting 7" wide knock off wheels
under the MGC fender flares. The factory did it, so I'm hoping the result
won't handle too dismally.
Kelvin.
>
>
> If (when) I get a custom rear end made, I can just as easily get it
> made to accept Datsun wheels as MGB offset wheels. The advantage being
> that wheels made to the Datsun/Nissan offset are a lot easier and
> cheaper to find.
>
> My question is, how does this affect the front suspsension? What are
> the effects on handling of changing the offset by about an inch?
>
> Larry
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