Decent handling susp setup?
Lol, Ehrenburg & co. put the Green Brick in 3rd place in the One Lap of America, behind only a Mosler GT and a Mallett C5 'vette. On 225/50VR15 Gatorback Goodyears!! When
I see/hear "225's ain't gonna get it done", I laugh out loud, really...........? I'm NOT arguing they are ideal by any stretch, and certainly E-booger & crew were looking to make
an improvement, mainly because of the already availability issues with good 15" shoes, but to say they're not going to get it done is laughable. The OP said He wasn't planning
to auto-X, just have some fun on the civilian twisties, the combo of performance and looks is also in play here. They didn't care if the 225/50's looked smallish, they worked &
kept the car low, and they stuck. If You look at whats available, there are still a decent selection of 16" that would work, but if You're not making the switch economically, You
might as well jump straight to 17's and get it over with.
Well, having run 225/60/15's on the street with most of the same suspension set up I have now I can tell you that the difference between them and something wider is significant. When I was running 225/60/15's I didn't have sway bars on my car, but I did have the 1.12" torsion bars and AFCO rear springs. The car was
completely flat in the corners, it was limited by tire traction only and would oversteer if pushed hard. As soon as I swapped up to the 275/35/18's and 295/35/18's I run now I had a significant amount of body roll return, even just on the street. I added front and rear Hellwig sway bars to get it back to where it should be, and when I push it now I still get a little more roll out of it than I did with the 225's. Which is probably good, because the suspension was too stiff for the 225's. And that was "just on the street".
So, laugh all you'd like, but 225's aren't going to get it done if you
really want to handle. Yes, if you set your car up correctly for the 225's you can have a good handling car, and one that handles remarkably better than any of these cars did stock (which isn't hard because they were awful in stock trim). But you're still leaving a TON of capability on the table. The tire width isn't the only issue, it's the tire selection. You can't get a good range of tire compounds in street legal 15" tires. You definitely don't have to go up to 275's like I did to handle well, but if you stay with 15's you can't get a soft enough compound. Most of the tire compounds available in a 225/60/15 range from 400 to 600 for treadwear. Even stepping down to a 300 treadwear tire makes a big difference from there. Just going up to 17's and a 245 would improve handling dramatically.
And, while the Green Brick was set up quite well, it's worth noting that the driver of the car was Kevin Wesley, and that had
a lot to do with the 'Brick's success.
question, what's your rear track width with the B body rear in it?
The 68-70 B-body 8 3/4 I run is 60 1/8" drum to drum. The rear wheels I run are 18x10's with +38mm of offset, so, the actual track width measured to the middle of the tire should be around 57 1/8", but that measurement doesn't help much with buying wheels. And to fit 18x10's and 295's I did a 1/2" spring offset and cut a bit more than a 1/2" off of the quarter lips.