Wider Rear Anniversary OEM Wheels?
 

I am thinking of possibly purchasing a procharger kit. I really like the look of my factory 35th Anniversary Wheels. I know I will ideally need wider rear tires if I do get the procharger. Is there any company making copies of the 35th anniversary wheels? That way I would only need to purchase 2 new wheels and tires and keep the stock look. If not is there any other options that anyone knows of? I tried a search and came up with nothing. Thanks

You can always get them widened but it's not worth the effort

Just get a set of aftermarket wheels :dunno:

How much would widening typically cost?

It's not worth widening the OEM cast wheels. They can only be widened on the inside, and starting at +33 offset and 8.5in width, the offset only gets less and less aggressive. Widening by an inch will end up at 18x9.5 +58 requiring a large spacer.

The base 370Z rear wheels are a better option if you like the similar styling of the wheel. It's 18x9 +15. Widening these half an inch, would end up at 18x9.5 +28 requiring no spacer, or widening by an inch, 18x10 +40 and running a very small spacer. Plus they have a pretty concave face.

Knowing exactly which alloy was used for casting would be beneficial, and I'm not sure how readily available that information is. Properly widening the wheels would require heat treating to restore any strength loss from welding. I'm not implying that the lack of heat treating would cause the wheel to break, but the proper method to restore the wheel to it's original strength would be to heat treat the alloy after welding.

Thanks for the info TK, is there any drawback to running a large spacer? My car is an 05 anniversary edition with real low miles (16k) and I really wanna keep it as stock as possible looking for a sleeper look, on the small chance the 35th anniversary edition is ever collectible (unlikely I know ha), because I really like the look of these wheels and hopefully the cost to widen the rears would be less than a set of 4 aftermarket or 370Z wheels. I know in past experience with another car, with non hub centric spacers I ran into wheel balancing problems, but with Hub-centric rings there was no problem (but I had to get longer lug bolts installed. I am far from an expert on wheel offsets and spacers though.

I ran spacers on my Z for 6 months without issues (20mm front, 25mm rear). However, running spacers puts a greater load on your wheel bearings and can cause premature failure. The 20mm spacers on my previous car (MB 300SL) caused failures on both of my fronts.

http://i47.tinypic.com/mt9xxc.jpg

It's about as close to our stock design as you can get. The advantage to running these is that with a half inch of widening you can run them without spacers or rings, as they are hubcentric to both Zs. You can get them widened larger than the 350Z wheels without having to run ridiculous spacers. You will need the 370Z lug nuts though. The downside is, without knowing the casting alloy, it won't be as good as OEM.

Honestly, to widen the the AE wheels is a waste of time. At the end of the day, they offer no advantage over the 370Z wheels as far as fitment goes. And the cast alloy has the same downside as the 370Z wheels.

The Track wheels have the same exact size as the AE wheels, will have the same fitment after widening(requiring a spacer), and can be heat treated back to 100% strength, because it's a known forged alloy. The end product will also be lighter than any of the wheels even before widening. Also, much higher resale value.

The work done to them is going to cost the same, regardless of type. The main difference is the input cost of the wheels, but really it boils down to ~$300 difference between the cheapest option, and the most expensive. Aside from that, the end product is what matters. To me, the AE wheels don't offer anything at the end that one of the other 2 wheels can't already do better.

will anniversary wheels fit on 2004 Z roadster? thanks

yes