Reply to "Spring 2003 Pantera International quarterly magazine"

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Originally posted by Mike Dailey:
There is a very interesting article in the Spring 2003 Pantera International quarterly magazine about wheels and tires. The article is written by Goran Maimberg and is mostly focused on wheel and tire combinations but integral to the discussion is some information about how important the Pantera ride height is to the performance of the car, e.g. actual calculations on the impact of height. The article is very well done and easy to understand.

I did not want to go to 17� and 16� wheels to get good Z rated tires and planned carefully to keep the car as close to the ride height I had with the 15� stock wheel as possible. With a bunch of work on wheel and tire selection I was able to keep it very close to the 15� wheel Euro ride height. At the time I didn�t understand what I was doing I just wanted the car to have the same stance as it had with the 15� wheels because I liked how it looked. Now I know there is much more to it than how it looks! The car was at the 15� wheel and tire ride height for very good performance reasons.

One puzzling part was a contribution from Kirby Schrader about the performance problems with 18� wheels that I did not understand.

Can anyone shed some light on what�s going on with the 18� wheel problems, custom machine work, more negative offset, lack of room between the top of the fender and the top of the tire, can�t get the wheel to go high enough up into the fender, etc. Does this same problem exist with 17� front wheels when using the correct tire side wall height for a Pantera? I guessing the tire must hit the flat underside of the fender?

Mike

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