Fender Flare/Tire Question

[BumblebeeTuna]

Hello there!
I have a 99 Ram 2500 that’s leveled. I want to get some new wheels/tires for it, but I’m getting kind of confused as to how to determine what offset to run. It’s currently sitting on 285/75r16. My confusion is that I have fender flares that add 2” from the body to the edge of the flare and I have spacers to flush the tires up. I want to eliminate the spacers, but still have the tires flush. I wanted to get 18s for it, so if anyone has any insight or recommendations for me, I’d appreciate it.

 

[dapepper9]

Ok, for starters, don't worry about wheel diameter at this point. The 2 things that matter are OFFSET and WIDTH. It gets confusing but it's pretty simple really.

So, here's a photo of mine. My wheels are 17x9 -12mm offset. They stick about 1-1.5" outside the wheel well. Lined up with 2" flares pretty good actually.

So they're 9 inches wide and have a -12mm offset.
The way offset works is ZERO offset has the flange where the wheel bolts to the hub at the wheel centerline. Negative offset, so -12mm or -24 or -44 or whatever it may be, pushes the wheel away from the axle like this:

Positive offset does the very opposite and pushes it in towards the axle like this:



So, it depends where you want the edge of the tire to be. A wider wheel will push it out farther. A 10" wide wheel with -6mm offset will look very similar to my 9" wide wheel with -12mm. A 12" wide wheel with -44mm offset will give you the look you see SEMA type setups running with a huge lip and the majority of the wheel and tire out from underneath the truck, almost beside it even.

 

[dapepper9]

If you want them to match up well with flares, i would stick to 9-10" wide with no more than -12mm offset.

CustomOffsets is a good site to look for sets. You can select the specific widths, offsets and diameters that you want to see and with a ton of manufacturers on there you'll have quite the list to go through

 

[BumblebeeTuna]

Awesome, thank you for the detailed explanation and info. I’ll check out that site for wheels. Any recommendations on what brands to stay away from?

 

[dapepper9]

Not really. There's not really any brand that's known for defects or failures or anything like that. Big thing is figure out your budget and what you like for style. You can narrow down their list by style a little bit but i wouldn't. The sizing will likely do that enough and you never know what might just jump out at you