Best steels to get banded?

[cwspellowe]

All this "will I need spacers" lark depends on exactly what width band you get put in and where in the wheel.

Personally if I were going to band a set I'd get a set of 308 16" steels as they are ET32 (rather than the standard 306 ET18) and the back edge shouldnt touch anything so Id guess you'd be able to drop a 25-30mm band into the outer lip to make them look really wide and a 28mm band would bring them back out to ET18 like standard. I think they are 7" wide so this would take them out to just over 8"

feck me chris you know your stuff.

LOL cheers mate, obviously I'm in no way considering this.

Not thinking this through Chris. Yes the offset of the wheel will be similar to standard ET18 but the inset of the wheel will be the same as the ET32 standard wheel as the band is usually on the outside edge. This means the distance to the inner arch does not change and in effect you'll be fitting an ET32 steel wheel to the car in terms of inner arch gap.

See here, this is with the standard wheel to give an idea what moves and what doesn't. I've shown the standard centreline and offset in relation to it, yes the diagram shows a negative offset wheel but it makes drawing it easier.

   

Now the following picture shows what happens when a wheel is banded. For demonstration purposes i'm showing it as if the wheel was banded still attached to the hub.

   

The bold black outline shows the part of the wheel that does not change. By banding the outside edge of the wheel, the wheel gets wider and the offset lower, but the distance to the inner arch is exactly the same as before. You could fit a 10" band to a wheel, but the inner arch clearance will not change, regardless of where on the outside of the wheel you band it.

The only ways the inner arch clearance would change are if:

a. The barrel is banded on the inside of the wheel (which would give you a higher offset and less inner arch clearance)

or

b. The barrel is cut down on the inside of the wheel and re-welded (which i've heard of noone doing, you'd have to shorten the inner part of the barrel and add material to the outer barrel)

A 7" wide ET32 wheel would be f*cking close to the inner arch, it's pretty much Ford offset and they're chuffing close to rubbing on stuff. If only someone had those steels that could give a valid insight...

OWAIT i've got those steels and I run spacers despite them being 10" wide. There you go then. Problem solved.