Installed the 18" Wheels on the Duster

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goldduster318

goldduster318

Overzealous Car Modifier
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All,

I finally have the 18" American Racing Torque Thrust M's and the 275-35-18 tires on the Duster. The wheels had to have the centers modified. That's covered in my other topic regarding these wheels.

The car is:
'70 Duster
Hotchkis UCAs, Sway Bars
RMS Strut Rods
1.06 Firm Feel Torsion Bars
Hotchkis/Fox non-adjustable shocks
ESPO 6 leaf springs with MP offset shackles
11.75 front disks
68 B-Body 8 3/4

Wheels are American Racing Torque Thrust M with center bore opened and Rocket Racing Dome center caps. 18x9, +35 (6.34 backspace).

In the front, they are installed with 10mm hub centric wheels spacers - this is to increase clearance to the control arms while turning. So far so good on clearing everything. The concern would be near the lock at droop. No spacers in the rear at this time.

Here are the pictures:
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20150821_131200_zps1cwdxbrk.jpg

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20150821_131456_zpsehaeve48.jpg

20150821_131326_zpsx4m3h1b3.jpg

20150821_131317_zpswqrhh0ha.jpg
 
Those look good. Nice car! tmm
 
I'm not a fan of big wheels on these old girls, but those do look good. Maybe it's just wheel choices that I have seen that turns me off.
 
Hows the ride? I have same shocks and 1.18 FF bars and it rides super. I had 1.06 bars before and those shocks blew my mind after swapping from Bilstein RCD's.
 
72BBSwinger said:
Hows the ride? I have same shocks and 1.18 FF bars and it rides super. I had 1.06 bars before and those shocks blew my mind after swapping from Bilstein RCD's.
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While I haven't driven it on any of the extra rough roads (SE Michigan's roads are incredibly awful), The normal but still somewhat rough roads I have driven it on make it feel extremely good. It feels smoother with this tire/wheel combo than it did with my previous 225-60-15 tires. The even more amazing thing is that the car feels like it tracks better now.

I have the alignment at -1.5 camber +3 caster and 1/16 toe-in per side. We'll see if I decide it's worth it to take the UCAs off to add more caster or not. It's a garage alignment so it's only my time for that. I have some real turn plates coming now so that will help.
 
You may want to back some of that camber out. Typically around -1* you start to see tire wear on account of the camber. If it's used mostly for spirited driving in corners it probably won't be an issue, but if it just gets cruised around most of the time you may see some camber wear at -1.5*.
 
72bluNblu said:
You may want to back some of that camber out. Typically around -1* you start to see tire wear on account of the camber. If it's used mostly for spirited driving in corners it probably won't be an issue, but if it just gets cruised around most of the time you may see some camber wear at -1.5*.
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Not worried about tire wear honestly. I can also rotate them front to rear. 1.5 isn't out of the realm of what I have seen factory on some BMWs. I have the same tires (Continental Extreme Contact DW) on my 04 Colorado and they are 5 years old and have over 25k on them and are still about 1/3 left before the wear indicators.

The Duster gets driven about 1500 miles per year. I'm sure they'll probably dry rot before they wear out. This is a fun car :D. Also been all summer (1k miles on the 15" BFGs with that setup and I can't even tell)
 
Yeah I guess at 1,500 miles a year it doesn't matter, those tires will disintegrate before they wear out.

I log as much as 1,000 miles a month, and have a staggered set up on the duster so I can't rotate.

You should drive the old girl more! ;)
 
Makes the front look a lot wider than the back, tread width wise.....kinda looks odd to me, not trying to bash on your car, just sayin
 
replicaracer43 said:
Makes the front look a lot wider than the back, tread width wise.....kinda looks odd to me, not trying to bash on your car, just sayin
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Almost all cars have a wider front track than the rear as it helps in weight transfer. A-bodies from the factory came with a 58"+ or so front hub-to-hub measure and a rear drum-to-drum measurement of 57 1/8" with an 8 3/4. IIRC, the track width was even shorter for an 8 1/4 and 8 3/4. If you really wanted to handle, you'd throw fatter tires on the front than the rear as our cars are front heavy. But no one does that because it "kinda looks odd."
 
Bad Sport said:
I'm not a fan of big wheels on these old girls, but those do look good. Maybe it's just wheel choices that I have seen that turns me off.
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I was thinking the exact same thing- I think the combination of big rims in a 'vintage' style is maybe why I like it...
 
72bluNblu said:
Yeah I guess at 1,500 miles a year it doesn't matter, those tires will disintegrate before they wear out.

I log as much as 1,000 miles a month, and have a staggered set up on the duster so I can't rotate.

You should drive the old girl more! ;)
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Well, there's a few problems with driving it a lot. Here in Michigan it's basically either too cold for it to run decent in it's current state, or snowing for at least 5 months a year. It basically goes to bed on or around halloween and comes out in early April. There are also days where its 95 and 85% humidity where you are baked alive.

Additionally, I have 2 other cars and commute 50 miles a day round trip and the Duster goes to work only for the employee car show (also dictated by insurance).

Maybe once I have the EFI on I'll drive it some more but at this point it probably won't change much. If I added A/C I might consider going on power tour or something.

replicaracer43 said:
Makes the front look a lot wider than the back, tread width wise.....kinda looks odd to me, not trying to bash on your car, just sayin
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MuuMuu101 said:
Almost all cars have a wider front track than the rear as it helps in weight transfer. A-bodies from the factory came with a 58"+ or so front hub-to-hub measure and a rear drum-to-drum measurement of 57 1/8" with an 8 3/4. IIRC, the track width was even shorter for an 8 1/4 and 8 3/4. If you really wanted to handle, you'd throw fatter tires on the front than the rear as our cars are front heavy. But no one does that because it "kinda looks odd."
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This car has the big bolt front disks with the bigger rotors added. The track width for that is 59.2", plus I have a 10mm spacer on each side in the front only which makes the track basically 60" right on the nose. The rearend is 59.95" wide being a 68 B-body so they honestly are almost lined up. I know that visually it looks a little odd and I may buy another set of 10mm wheel spacers for this purpose.

That would make it be more like this picture with my old wheels on
3-23-2009001.jpg
 
As I said before, it looks great. Sorry I wasn't able to catch you at Woodward.
 
95teetee said:
I was thinking the exact same thing- I think the combination of big rims in a 'vintage' style is maybe why I like it...
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I think that's it, most of these bigger wheels I have seen just don't "fit the bill", but those wheels look great on there.

At some point I may rethinks the whole thing, lol.
 
Your wheels look modern & super nice. The color choice goes great with the pin stripes on your car IMO !!

I have 18's on my Demon too :D
 
goldduster318 said:
Thanks! Do you think you are coming back next year?
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My friends really want me to and I loved it while I was out here, but we'll see. It was quite an expensive trip (mostly due to the rental car company since I'm younger than 25). If the Dart is up to par, I might take extra vacation days and drive that up there.
 
MuuMuu101 said:
My friends really want me to and I loved it while I was out here, but we'll see. It was quite an expensive trip (mostly due to the rental car company since I'm younger than 25). If the Dart is up to par, I might take extra vacation days and drive that up there.
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I hear ya there. I remember renting a car when my truck had total exhaust manifold failure and I wasn't quite 25. That was rough. Figures they fixed the truck for free under the emissions warranty but I probably had a rental car for 36 hrs and I think it was damn near $180.

That would be quite a roadtrip with the Dart. 2260 miles or so, about 32 hrs one way. Probably cheaper to rent a car still!
 
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