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last weekend came a cross some dirt cheap starquest wheels 50 bucks! i know you cant staggered awd tall (ex. 17inch wheels in and 18 inch wheels, big no no) but i wondering because the starquest wheel are offset wide, 205mm in front and 225mm in the rear (this the tires width) but both wheels are 16 inches. my question is would these wheels f**k up my rear diff on my 91 tsi awd ?

The issue is over long term the differences in ratios between the front and rear wheels will cause the diffs/diff to burn up. the small differences in traction that you may have in a turn or in a take off would be a negligible affect. If the offset isn't all jacked up, Run 'em

Yes. The tires sizes have to be the same front and rear.

Width has no bearing on awd reliability.

That may be true, but I still wouldn't want to mess with it. Any differences in rolling speed are gonna fruit and banana the diffs up.

Every time you turn there is a difference in speed in all wheels, there is no way width would harm it any more in a turn strait line would see no difference and there would be negligble difference while racing it(burning out), cause even when you do a awd burnout in a regular car, some wheels move before others.

Why is that so funny? Why put extra stress on the spider gears? Doesn't seem worthwhile to me, just get some wheels and tires that fit right the first time. Staggered wheels/tires would look fruit and banana stupid on a CSM or a DSM anyway.

No reason to get butt hurt, its only funny because there shouldn't be any big difference. You "stress out" the spider gears everytime you turn or put a load on the suspension, there shouldn't be much more even with the extra width.

Yeah, but you're only stressing them for that short period of time that you're turning. With this, you'd be putting that amount of stress on them all the time. I'm not getting butthurt, I was genuinely interested in why you thought that was so funny.

He's not talking about different sized wheels, he's talking about wheels with different offsets which should make no difference as they have the same size contact patch.

Yeah I guess that would make no difference. It would still look stupid though.

BMW guys use different width wheels on AWD cars all the time, granted im sure their setup is different than ours.

You have the Non SHP wheels which are 7 inch wide fronts and 8 inch wide rears. Getting the rears to fit under a CSM will definately be a chore. Also, the Conquest/Starions ran almost 0mm offset in the rear which will probably not fit so great on your CSM. This is why most Starions have stock wheels. Its because finding a set of aftermarket wheels that fit without using spacers usually end up costing more than what they paid for the car in the first place.

http://www.wheelsmaster.com/rt_specs.jsp


Assuming you're using these variables, this is what I came up with


225/40-16 on a 16x8 rim

245/40-16 on a 16x9 rim : When speedometer reads 60mph (96.6km/h) actual speed will be 61.6mph (99.2km/h): 2.7% faster

The offset of the Conquest rear wheel will stick way out of the body of the vehicle. I put my Conquest rear wheels on my friend Rich's FWD Laser and they looked stupid. However If you want to do this anyway, simply go to the tire manufactor website and look up the tire sizes you want to run and make sure the tire hieght/rolling distance are the same from the two differant tire sizes and you will be ok.
Dramatic differances in tire size will burn up the center diff, but not as fast as most people would expect.

Going by the tire sizes I have on my Conquest, 225/50R16 and 245/45R16 The rolling distance differance between the two is only 14 mm (The 225 rolls 1926 mm and the 245 rolls 1912 mm). This means the center diffs internal clutches will have to make 1 360 degree rotation every time the tires roll 137 times. That comes out to roughly 6 rotations per mile, or once every 10 seconds at highway speeds.

In comparison Putting a set of worn out tire mixed with new tires of the same size on a 225/50r16 can have a differance in rolling distance of 60mm or so, not including differances in tire brands. Also there is the wieght on the tire changing the rolling circumference of the tire, I was unable to come up with a exact number, but a article I read said that a 60/40 split wieght car with the same tire pressures front rear can be expected to have a 4mm differance of 4mm. On top of that you have huge diferances from driving with a low tire. These are all thing viscous center diffs are put through every day and are what they are designed for.

So in the end a viscous coupling if going to go through a lot mmore hell everyday by the average user then by mixing tire/rim sizes with a very close tire diameter.

LOL, I just wasted like 45 minutes typing this out and nobody is ever going to read it. But it was fun reading about this stuff as I didn't know it till I started punching in all the numbers into gear calculators. Interesting.

Doesn't the wrong offset cause excessive wear or premature wheel bearing failure?