Australia-Where to find nostalgic rims (Wheel fitment fail)

Long · **Posted:** Fri Jul 08, 2011 10:41 pm

Thanks for the clarification.
Bought some shank lug nuts - still need to get the hub rings, don't want to put stress on the studs

Fitment looks good, not fouling anything on lock to lock.

Problem

WTF, looks damn puny on the car!? I seem to remember other ronas looking fine with 14's and low profile. Well I'll probably have to wait till lowering to have the final verdict.

ill-minded · **Posted:** Fri Jul 08, 2011 11:44 pm

Once you drop the car (probably 3-4" in your case) it'll look a lot better than it does now. Only problem is how much clearance you've got underneath the car.

What size are the tyres? Might pay to go up a step in profile to add a bit more clearance and fill the guard gap a little better with the aforementioned lowering.

Long · **Posted:** Sun Jul 10, 2011 3:08 am

Concerning a drop, looks like it won't foul anything going down 3 maybe 4 inches although It looks like the leafs would need to be arched in the opposite direction. Also the clearance of the exhaust pipe might be too small.

Huge drop, it'll probably screw up everything. I kind of want to keep the drivability. In two minds about keeping wheels and getting some bigger profiles which would ruin the look of the wheels. Let me know what you guys think about a drop.

Long · **Posted:** Sun Jul 10, 2011 3:09 am

ill-minded wrote:

Once you drop the car (probably 3-4" in your case) it'll look a lot better than it does now. Only problem is how much clearance you've got underneath the car.

What size are the tyres? Might pay to go up a step in profile to add a bit more clearance and fill the guard gap a little better with the aforementioned lowering.

185/50 14 btw

Camshaft · **Posted:** Sun Jul 10, 2011 11:15 am

More sidewall and a mild drop would do wonders for this car. Tiny lo-pros always looked silly to me, personally.

mrflibbles · **Posted:** Sun Jul 10, 2011 8:18 pm

i think something with a taller side wall would make it look better, maybe a 185/65r14? and a couple of inches of drop! wheels do look good though!

Changelink · **Posted:** Sun Jul 10, 2011 10:43 pm

Nice find on the wheels.. Lowering springs are sold in Australia by King Springs , they will lower the front 30- 35mm .. I found them by doing a Australia ebay search.. Kinda expensive at 159.99 an for me im sure the shipping to the U.S. will kill me..
I also want to ask how easy it is to find a right side rear view mirror for an RT 118? Here in the U.S. we only got a left side rear view mirror..

Long · **Posted:** Mon Jul 11, 2011 3:07 am

mrflibbles wrote:

i think something with a taller side wall would make it look better, maybe a 185/65r14? and a couple of inches of drop! wheels do look good though!

Camshaft wrote:

More sidewall and a mild drop would do wonders for this car. Tiny lo-pros always looked silly to me, personally.

Trying to determine a size that will look good. Kinda hard to tell without them mounted.

185/75 - oem size

195/60 on a 14X7

Changelink wrote:

Nice find on the wheels.. Lowering springs are sold in Australia by King Springs , they will lower the front 30- 35mm .. I found them by doing a Australia ebay search.. Kinda expensive at 159.99 an for me im sure the shipping to the U.S. will kill me..
I also want to ask how easy it is to find a right side rear view mirror for an RT 118? Here in the U.S. we only got a left side rear view mirror..

Fronts should be relatively easy, Pedders also has lowered springs. It's the leafs that I have NFI about. I've been researching leaf resetting, not sure how much it costs to do or where to get that done. Rod shop?

Right hand side mirrors shouldn't be very hard to find in Australia at the junkyard and they're many mirrors that look pretty much the same. My left one is a from a cordia and looks near identical. In my opinion though, the left mirror is redundant and unneccessary and I regret drilling holes into my door. How much is shipping to the US? I have a front bumper...

Stevester · **Posted:** Mon Jul 11, 2011 6:11 pm

Long wrote:

185/50 14 btw

IMO, that is just waaaay too small. Just as points of reference:

1. my Miata came with 195/50-15, about 1.5" bigger in diameter.
2. my 1979 Celica came with 185/70-14

Since your Corona is relatively large (for J-Tin back then), and is a four-seater sedan, I would guess that your Corona originally had 195/75-14. If you're sticking with 14" wheels, you probably need 215/60-14 to fill the wheel wells...

zzzzed · **Posted:** Tue Jul 12, 2011 2:54 am

Talk to Ben. He often brings in containers from Japan. Filled with old rims

http://www.otomoto.com.au/showroom.htm

ill-minded · **Posted:** Wed Jul 13, 2011 2:54 am

185/60R14 is usually a pretty decent size to run on 14's without looking too bulgy. They're available everywhere for relatively little cost and work well on most early Toyotas.

timmy201 · **Posted:** Sat Jul 23, 2011 11:41 pm

I got 175/65's for my 14x6's. They are the same height as the 185/60's but a fair bit cheaper (I was a bit worried about strut clearance too)

tj75gc · **Posted:** Tue Jul 26, 2011 5:53 am

On the topic of reseting leaf springs, its more common than you think. My local Pedders has a big sign out front proclaiming "Leaf spring resets" with a price.
It's mostly for trailers and utes that still use them for heavy duty purposes.

I spoke to them some time ago about lowering the rear of my galant. At the time I was running a 3 leaf spring (as opposed to the standard 2) but the quoted me a pretty steep price and then started getting hesitant about doing it saying they believed they would break while resetting them.

I ended up going back to the original 2 leads anyway, but I'd still like it a touch lower.

I'm not sure but they may even be able to custom make new leaf springs, its not like they're complicated.

There's also lowering blocks for cars who's rear spring setup has the diff on top of the spring (as opposed to below it like a lot of trucks and utes)
It's normally sold as a kit with a 1 or 2 inch block of steel or aluminium with longer U-bolts. I don't know about the legality of them though, I wouldn't mind betting they're not legal out here.

Long · **Posted:** Fri Jul 29, 2011 2:37 am

tj75gc, you have PM

Thanks for the reply guys, waiting on a PM for a tyre swap with another member if possible. (Thanks JNC!).

In the mean time, finding Hub centric rings have been nigh on impossible. The standard sizes are soooo close together and with no to-the-tenth way of measuring it since my verniers won't physically fit inside the wheel. Roughly it's looking to be a 60.1mm to 72.00mm adapter. Tyre power sized up a 73mm for me and said it was a mm too big. Ebay hasn't helped much with these sizings either. Canterbury wheels have quoted machining at 20 each.

What I'm thinking about doing, is buying the 73mm and somehow sanding them down enough to produce a snug mating with the hub bore and chamfer. Question is how at the moment. Anyone have any good ideas to shave off enough plastic while keeping the ring accurately concentric? Preferably without having the car on stands and running :lol:

Long · **Posted:** Thu Oct 20, 2011 2:23 am

Update, the previous wheels were sold, I couldn't find the right sized hub rings and couldnt justify the expense of machining new ones.

Good news though, I got some of these from otomoto:

So now I have these brand new shank lug nuts which I bought for the previous set of wheels...Anyone want to swap with me for some tapered nuts?

Stevester · **Posted:** Sun Oct 23, 2011 2:49 am

Are those real, original Enkei 92? I ask because the lug holes look kind of large (hard to be sure in your pictures). They should have steel conical seat inserts and it looks like they are missing in your wheels in your photos... If so, I wouldn't use them...

Long · **Posted:** Fri Oct 28, 2011 3:23 am

Stevester wrote:

Are those real, original Enkei 92? I ask because the lug holes look kind of large (hard to be sure in your pictures). They should have steel conical seat inserts and it looks like they are missing in your wheels in your photos... If so, I wouldn't use them...

I doubt they are real, were advertised as Enkei's but had an Autobahn sticker on it. Can you show me some photos of these steel inserts?

What I can see, is they have a conical/tapered seat which is fairly rusty.

Long · **Posted:** Sat Oct 29, 2011 1:07 am

My Journey is over

Big thanks to the Ben at Otomoto for supplying the wheels and Canterbury wheels for the hubrings, tyres and nuts (highly recommend them).

Also, thanks to everyone here for giving me tips along the way, didn't think I'd learn so much from fitting wheels!

Hazwan · **Posted:** Sat Nov 12, 2011 9:19 pm

Moar low!

Long · **Posted:** Thu Nov 17, 2011 2:43 am

Hazwan wrote:

Moar low!

Pics to come.

I have a whole host of issues now, firstly my master cylinder went bad and I got that replaced along with a pair of front pads. Which weren't set up correctly resulting in massive brake steer.

WARNING THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU TRY TO FIGHT HEAVY BRAKE STEER:

Australia-Where to find nostalgic rims (Wheel fitment fail)

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