C5 Corvette wheel on 1996 Z28 Project
06-27-2014, 07:33 AM
#1
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Join Date: Jun 2014
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C5 Corvette wheel on 1996 Z28 Project
7/1/2014: Sorry for the sudden pause in the process -- my car is at Autofab Race Cars getting the 3.42 rear end put in. It should be back sometime today or tomorrow. I also have to save up money for the tires, so don't expect this to be finished until next month 
Hi all!
Some of you all may have seen my post earlier about what size tires to put on C5 Corvette rims; well now I have it all figured out, thanks to some research and also a boat-load of help from Injuneer!
Anyways, I am pretty excited to put on my recently purchased C5 wheels, so I figured I would share the experience with you all through pictures, links, stories, whatever comes up!
Introduction/Explanation
First, let me explain the setup: Green 1996 LT1 Z28 Camaro, everything "stock-specs" (some things not stock, but retain stock specs) besides a performance air filter I put on, an SLP SS spoiler, and the gears being changed from 2.73 to 3.42 (the rear end blew (somehow)
so I might as well replace it with a faster one!).
The wheels are 2000 C5 Corvette rims like this:
They are a staggered set; the front wheels are 17"x8.5" (+56mm offset) and the rear wheels are 18"x9.5" (+57mm offset). I got these wheels for...wait for it...$150 dollars from a friend of mine. For all four. They are in perfect condition, but when I bought them they were coated in black plastidip. My father and I bought paint stripper, sprayed it all over the wheels and it came right off with a little scrubbing (NOTE IMAGE BELOW)
I have decided that I want to get them painted black again though; I test fitted the rims on my car yesterday before we stripped them to make sure the clearances were okay in both front in back, and the black rims looked very "mean" when put with the green paint and my carbon fiber wrapped SS spoiler, and I really liked the look. (NOTE IMAGE BELOW)
When I test fitted them, everything looked like it would be okay (besides having to grind off some metal where the wheel goes over the hub on the rear wheels). There is an edge on the inside rear quarter panel that looks like it might rub the inside edge of the tire, so if anything I will have to hammer that back. I may purchase .5"-1" spacers for the rear, but I haven't decided yet. They will be fine without spacers but I feel like the tires will sit too deep into the wheel-well and will look "weird" to me, but only time will tell!
The tires I am getting for it are Hankook Ventus V12 evo K110s. I have read reviews on these tires saying they are a great bang-for-your-buck, and since I am on a part time budget (being an 18 year old), I feel these will be more than good enough for cruising around with a little bit of spirited driving here and there .
As for the tire size, I have had put lot of thought into it and had a lot of input from other people, mostly being Injuneer. I learned that I have to consider that, since my wheels are staggered, I have to buy tires that don't "look weird" on the car (fronts being really thin/thick while the rears look really thick/thin in comparison). I have been looking around and trying to find tire sizes that match closely in two categories: tire diameter and sidewall height, so...
For the fronts, I have decided to run 245/45-17s. These give me a tire diameter of 25.7" and a sidewall height of 4.34", and they also give me some good width for traction. For the rears, I have picked 285/35/18s. These will give me a tire diameter of 25.9" and a sidewall height of 3.93". For comparison, there is only a .2" difference in tire diameter, and a .41" difference in sidewall height, which both are very small. (If you think that a .41" difference is a big difference (like I did at first), go on to iRuler.net - Online ruler and try to measure .41" with two fingertips ).
That basically sums up the explanation/introduction section. I will continue editing this post supplying you guys with updated and pictures to the step we have taken so far. Thanks!
DONE SO FAR
I'll be doing this section in numerical order of what we have done in this whole process of replacing my stock Z28 wheels with these C5 wheels. I will try to put pictures with as much as I can..
1. Bought the wheels
Bought these wheels for $150 dollars. They came plastidipped and looked decent, but as I will explain later, we decided to strip and paint them.
2. Test-fitted the wheels on the car
I only have a picture of my rear-wheel on, but I think they are going to look really great on the car, especially black! I had to grind some of the metal off of where the wheels go over the hubs so that they would easily slide on and off. After doing so, they fit well and the wheel clears everything, but as I mentioned earlier I might have to bang in the bottom corner on the inside of the wheel-well.
3. Stripped the pastidip off of the wheels
We have only the back two wheels done, but here is a photo of my father and I stripping the wheels back down to bare-metal. We would have left them alone, but when I was test-fitting the wheels earlier that day, some of the plastidip started to peel. Instead of just doing a "band-aid fix" (re-coating in plastidip), I decided that I wanted to strip them to the bare-metal and get them properly painted so we wouldn't have to worry about anything peeling again. That plastidip is some nasty stuff!
NEXT STEPS
Paint the wheels!
We don't want to have four Corvette wheels that look like they just came out of a miserably failed scratch-test (haha) so we are either going to get them powder-coated black or just paint them matte black ourselves!
Purchase the tires!
We can't put them on and look at all of their glory properly without some nice tires to go along! I will probably not have the tires until some time next month due to having to buy them myself alongside paying for insurance, gas, food, a girlfriend, etc. We plan on painting them in the meantime, though, so I will keep you all updated on that, and I'll post more pictures when I can!
Thank you all for reading! If you have any suggestions, just PM me or reply to this thread, I love to learn about these cars
-Nick
Hi all!
Some of you all may have seen my post earlier about what size tires to put on C5 Corvette rims; well now I have it all figured out, thanks to some research and also a boat-load of help from Injuneer!
Anyways, I am pretty excited to put on my recently purchased C5 wheels, so I figured I would share the experience with you all through pictures, links, stories, whatever comes up!
Introduction/Explanation
First, let me explain the setup: Green 1996 LT1 Z28 Camaro, everything "stock-specs" (some things not stock, but retain stock specs) besides a performance air filter I put on, an SLP SS spoiler, and the gears being changed from 2.73 to 3.42 (the rear end blew (somehow)
so I might as well replace it with a faster one!). The wheels are 2000 C5 Corvette rims like this:
They are a staggered set; the front wheels are 17"x8.5" (+56mm offset) and the rear wheels are 18"x9.5" (+57mm offset). I got these wheels for...wait for it...$150 dollars from a friend of mine. For all four. They are in perfect condition, but when I bought them they were coated in black plastidip. My father and I bought paint stripper, sprayed it all over the wheels and it came right off with a little scrubbing (NOTE IMAGE BELOW)
I have decided that I want to get them painted black again though; I test fitted the rims on my car yesterday before we stripped them to make sure the clearances were okay in both front in back, and the black rims looked very "mean" when put with the green paint and my carbon fiber wrapped SS spoiler, and I really liked the look. (NOTE IMAGE BELOW)
When I test fitted them, everything looked like it would be okay (besides having to grind off some metal where the wheel goes over the hub on the rear wheels). There is an edge on the inside rear quarter panel that looks like it might rub the inside edge of the tire, so if anything I will have to hammer that back. I may purchase .5"-1" spacers for the rear, but I haven't decided yet. They will be fine without spacers but I feel like the tires will sit too deep into the wheel-well and will look "weird" to me, but only time will tell!
The tires I am getting for it are Hankook Ventus V12 evo K110s. I have read reviews on these tires saying they are a great bang-for-your-buck, and since I am on a part time budget (being an 18 year old), I feel these will be more than good enough for cruising around with a little bit of spirited driving here and there
.As for the tire size, I have had put lot of thought into it and had a lot of input from other people, mostly being Injuneer. I learned that I have to consider that, since my wheels are staggered, I have to buy tires that don't "look weird" on the car (fronts being really thin/thick while the rears look really thick/thin in comparison). I have been looking around and trying to find tire sizes that match closely in two categories: tire diameter and sidewall height, so...
For the fronts, I have decided to run 245/45-17s. These give me a tire diameter of 25.7" and a sidewall height of 4.34", and they also give me some good width for traction. For the rears, I have picked 285/35/18s. These will give me a tire diameter of 25.9" and a sidewall height of 3.93". For comparison, there is only a .2" difference in tire diameter, and a .41" difference in sidewall height, which both are very small. (If you think that a .41" difference is a big difference (like I did at first), go on to iRuler.net - Online ruler and try to measure .41" with two fingertips
).That basically sums up the explanation/introduction section. I will continue editing this post supplying you guys with updated and pictures to the step we have taken so far. Thanks!
DONE SO FAR
I'll be doing this section in numerical order of what we have done in this whole process of replacing my stock Z28 wheels with these C5 wheels. I will try to put pictures with as much as I can..
1. Bought the wheels
Bought these wheels for $150 dollars. They came plastidipped and looked decent, but as I will explain later, we decided to strip and paint them.
2. Test-fitted the wheels on the car
I only have a picture of my rear-wheel on, but I think they are going to look really great on the car, especially black! I had to grind some of the metal off of where the wheels go over the hubs so that they would easily slide on and off. After doing so, they fit well and the wheel clears everything, but as I mentioned earlier I might have to bang in the bottom corner on the inside of the wheel-well.
3. Stripped the pastidip off of the wheels
We have only the back two wheels done, but here is a photo of my father and I stripping the wheels back down to bare-metal. We would have left them alone, but when I was test-fitting the wheels earlier that day, some of the plastidip started to peel. Instead of just doing a "band-aid fix" (re-coating in plastidip), I decided that I wanted to strip them to the bare-metal and get them properly painted so we wouldn't have to worry about anything peeling again. That plastidip is some nasty stuff!
NEXT STEPS
Paint the wheels!
We don't want to have four Corvette wheels that look like they just came out of a miserably failed scratch-test (haha) so we are either going to get them powder-coated black or just paint them matte black ourselves!
Purchase the tires!
We can't put them on and look at all of their glory properly without some nice tires to go along! I will probably not have the tires until some time next month due to having to buy them myself alongside paying for insurance, gas, food, a girlfriend, etc
. We plan on painting them in the meantime, though, so I will keep you all updated on that, and I'll post more pictures when I can!Thank you all for reading! If you have any suggestions, just PM me or reply to this thread, I love to learn about these cars
-Nick
Last edited by TheGreenZ28; 07-01-2014 at 07:42 AM. Reason: Updates!
06-30-2014, 02:24 PM
#2
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Join Date: Feb 2002
Location: East Granby CT
Posts: 640
Re: C5 Corvette wheel on 1996 Z28 Project
Don't forget to check on Rear Wheel Fitment - With the ever so slightly larger hub - may to grind some!!
Post #10 - Hub Size Explanation & Note
Otherwise - Looking Good!!!
Post #10 - Hub Size Explanation & Note
Otherwise - Looking Good!!!
07-01-2014, 07:38 AM
#3
Registered User
Thread Starter
Join Date: Jun 2014
Posts: 14
Re: C5 Corvette wheel on 1996 Z28 Project
Don't forget to check on Rear Wheel Fitment - With the ever so slightly larger hub - may to grind some!!
Post #10 - Hub Size Explanation & Note
Otherwise - Looking Good!!!
Post #10 - Hub Size Explanation & Note
Otherwise - Looking Good!!!
Thanks for reminding me
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