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Wed Dec 12, 2007 5:27 pm

I am goin to put 2 inch wider fenders on my 69 bug. What is the widest wheel I can put on without it rubbing?

Sun Dec 16, 2007 12:55 am

This kind of a loaded question. Are we talking front or rear? It's not really the wheel you should be thinking about, it's your tire.

Sure someone can come in here and say, an 8" is what you want. Well, that is true, but you need to take into consideration the offset and back spacing. If these were optimized you might be able to run a 10".

Start with the rear. What you need to do is if you already have the fenders, bolt them up. Measure the distance (horizontally) from the face of the drum to the fender lip. This will give you the front spacing. Now measure the drum face to the inward (toward the trans) most unobstructed point inside the fender. This will give you the most allowable back spacing.

So lets say you front spacing is 4" and you rear is 5". This is going to give you a positive offset by 1" . This means your wheel face is going to sit 1" to the outside on the wheel from center. So say you want to run an 8" rim you could not run anything less than a 3" back spacing or it would rub on the outer lip of the fender.

Now your tire is typically going to bulge out of the rim about 1/2" each side. Therefore your tire is going to be 1" wider than your wheel. Keep this in mind when trying to stuff the fattest rim under those fenders.

If I don't have you completely confused yet I've done good. Hope this helped.

The fronts are another story.