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Reply to "Larger diameter wheels. Upgrading wheels and tires. Resizing wheels and tires. Modernizing wheels and tires. Campy clones, etc."

One detail that may become a pain late in your Pantera adventure is, adding extra caster to the front wheels to cure tram-lining and instability at high speeds will pull the wheels & tires back toward the cabin. If you buy max-sized wheels & tires, fit them almost as a slip-fit to the fender openings and then try tweeking the handling as a final stage, you may find the right tire again hits the wiper motor cover, the left tire touches a cowl drainage tube and generally, there may be little rub-areas all around the front wheel area, when at full lock one way or the other. The left & right tires will NOT necessarily be perfectly aligned the same with the two fender openings either, as the multiple frame jigs the factory used were apparently not exact copies nor perfect mirror images. And of course, front frame movement from 45 yrs of use, crash damage (even minor), lowering to taste and other things can change clearances when 5X-or more- tires are fitted. Tires also vary in exact dimensions from different mfgrs or even between tire models from the same maker.

To a lesser degree, the same goes when fitting giant rear tires. Best to leave extra clearance in excess of what George mentioned, or do all your handling & appearance updates before buying those max-size wheels & tires. Trading wheels & tires or flaring a fender for enough tire clearance on a 'finished' Pantera WILL be expensive!

I'm reminded of the owner that had his Pantera extensively pro-redone at enormous cost, bought big tires & wheels, drove the finished machine for a month and found that it's stock brakes were no longer adequate and 'looked funny' with the huge wheels & tires. But oversized brakes would not fit the wheel sizes he'd bought! He nearly gave his almost-new aftermarket wheels & tires away, and took a bath on prices for even larger ones when upgrading the brakes. Redesigning a car is a many-aspects thing....
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