6”Steel Wheels and hubcaps, Watch out for the backspace Options

[80’s old school]

So I am in the process of restomodding my 914.

I debated back and forth on wheels.

To me:

Fuchs (4) lug empi copies. (Too many folks doing it. I wanted something different)
Fuchs (5) lug with conversion. (Expensive. Too many folks doing it, etc.)
Panasports or Ultralight style. (I have had those previously on other sports cars, and frankly wanted something different)
Mahle, real Fuchs, etc.. ditto

Now I am not saying any of those are bad. I just want to be different.

I settled on Steel Wheels 6” with Chrome hubcaps with gold Porsche crest emblem.

At first I couldn’t make up my mind if I liked the look. Now it has grown on me and I like it.

Now to the part about backspacing.

These are the US wheel VW/Porsche steel wheel replicas in 6” wide.

They advertise them with 5 inch backspace. My calculations said this would be perfect and I “should” be able to easily get a 205 width tire under the rear. I settled on a 195 width tire and I am glad I did. The actual backspace is closer to 4”.

I like the deeper dish look, but you have to be real careful with fender rub.

[Cairo94507]

Great look- nice and clean. Very purposeful. Those are some serious tires for the street; are they noisy? Do they throw up a bunch of debris from the road? They look nice and sticky. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/beerchug.gif)

[80’s old school]

Great look- nice and clean. Very purposeful. Those are some serious tires for the street; are they noisy? Do they throw up a bunch of debris from the road? They look nice and sticky. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/beerchug.gif)

So far they have been good about not throwing things up off the street.

However, at low speeds they are a little noisy. Not too bad, but noisy enough to know it is from the tires. At highway speeds they are fine.

Since I live in SoCal, I built the car for canyon carving. So far I have taken it up the mountain a few times. It handles very good. Could use more power. Right now it has a little 1911 with dual Webers and MSDS header. More power will come in the future.