Mondial Wheel Rebuild

My Mondial came with 17" HRE three piece wheels that looked sharp at first glance but the improper offset, made the vehicle look a bit odd. I learned that the car had 2" lips and 6" barrels up front and 3" lips and 6" barrels at the rear. I contacted HRE to see if the wheels could be rebuilt, but they told me all they could do way shift the offset inboard 1/2 inch.

So I shifted my search to Ebay to look for wheels and stumbled upon someone selling various parts and pieces for 17" HRE's. He had two pair of 1" lips and a pair of 7" barrels that I snapped up. The plan was to reduce the wheel widths to 7" up front and to 8" at the rear. This would shift the front wheels inboard by 1" and rear 2".

The R&R process was fairly straightforward and within a day I had all of the wheels put back together and sealed with silicone. The tires that came with the car then went back on....235 45R17's up front and 255 40R17's out back.

Big disappointment arose when I looked at the new set up with wheels and tires back on the car. At first I couldn't put my finger on the problem...but it seemed to stem from the front wheels which now looked odd. So I found a couple of tire size calculators online to dig into the issue. I started by looking at specs for stock 205 and 225 55R16 and was somewhat surprised to see that the front tires are of smaller diameter than the rears by 0.8 inches.

That became a bit of a "duh" moment because when one thinks about it, yes the front and rears will be of different diameter when the widths are different but with the same profile. So it became obvious that the problem was with the 235 45R17 up front...they were actually a third of an inch larger in diameter than the 255 40R's in the rear.

Today I purchased two new 235 40R's for the front which gave me tires that were 0.6" in diameter smaller than the 255's in the rear...basically a similar differential to stock. I had wanted 225 40R's up front, but only one manufacturer supplies tires in that size for the street.

As an added benefit, the car has now been effectively lowered by about 1/2" in front and 3/4" in the rear as compared to stock. Wheel arch rubbing is also completely eliminated.

The first image below is the "as received" look....the three following show the re-shod look.

Brock
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