The Wheels:
Niche Milan M124
Front: 18x8 66.5 Bore (According to the Niche site)
Rear: 19x8.5 66.6 Bore (According to the Niche site)

I can't take credit for the wheel choice though. I copied another user on here who has the Niche M134 wheels. If you find this post, thank you sir, your taste is impeccable.

My Goal: Get rid of the ugly stock wheels that I hate, but keep the 18/19 set up and stock tire sizes. Basically, change the look of the car, but not the handling/performance.

What I learned: Getting wheels for this car is impossible. Or rather, getting wheels that stay true to the car's stock geometry is impossible. These are our stock wheels:

FRONT:
18x7.5"
5x112
ET 35 (offset)
66.56 Bore
Tire: 225-40/18

REAR:
19x9"
5x112
ET 22 (offset)
66.56 Bore
Tire: 255-35/19

Lug Bolt Size: 12.5mmx1.5"(39mm) - Ball Seat

Well, nobody makes wheels in these sizes :/ The only company that sort of comes close is Mandrus. I like Mandrus, but I wanted something a little more JDM looking. A little more utilitarian. Something sporty; the way Japanese drift cars looked before all this stance nonsense.

So anyway, the reason it's so hard to find aftermarket wheels for this car is mainly our rear offset. Offset is essentially where the mounting point is on the wheel. If the wheel physically mounts to the hub near the wheel's outer edge, then the wheel will be more recessed in the wheel well. If it mounts more towards the inside of the wheel, the wheel will stick out farther from the fender. Also, if the wheel mounts too close to the wheel well, you run the risk of not having enough wheel clearance or not having enough room to fit around the brake caliper.

So I did find a few wheels that were close to or equal to our front offset, but most wheels had an offset from 35-50; a far cry away from the 22 that our rear wheels require. This means we're going to need SPACERS to push the wheels out farther. (You can calculate the change in offset by searching "Wheel offset calculator". Choose a website and input your old vs new wheel sizes.)

SPACERS: Now there's a lot of taboo out there about spacers. Basically, I found that it's all the result of cheap Chinese eBay sellers making a pretend product that has no business on an automobile. That product is the Lug Centric Spacer. Avoid these at all costs. They will push the wheel out and correct the offset, but they DO NOT properly secure the wheel to the car's hub, resulting in dangerous vibration and instability at speed.

What we need is a Hub Centric Spacer. These spacers sit flush over your hub and usually have a Hub Centric Lip or Ring that basically acts as a new hub to mount your wheel onto. Some even have lug studs or new threads for your lug bolts so you can mount your wheel to the spacer. Essentially, you secure the spacer to the hub, then you mount your wheel directly to the spacer. These are ideal. And obviously, you must match the Spacer's bore diameter to your hub diameter. If necessary, they make Hub Rings which fit over your hub to increase it's diameter, allowing a larger diameter hub ring to mount flush and securely.

So for the Crossfire, I found that I needed REALLY LARGE spacers for the rear. I needed 30-35mm to get back to the stock offset (your wheels may not require as much). This presented a problem. If the Spacers are 35mm, then I need Lug Bolts that are 35mm longer as well. Unfortunately, these do not exist, and probably wouldn't be safe to mount a wheel on if they did. So I set out to find Spacers with a stud or threads built in so I could just mount to the spacer directly to the hub with normal size bolts, then mount the wheel to the spacer.

Well guys, nobody made the spacer I was looking for except Eibach. What made it difficult to find is that Eibach does not list their specs (bore size, bolt pattern). One must simply search for "Crossfire Spacer". Eibach guarantees their product will fit the Crossfire and includes new shorter length lug bolts to aid in clearance (See CAUTION note below).

So for the rear, I chose a 30mm Eibach Spacer with hub centric lip and threads built in to mount the wheel directly to the spacer instead of through it. I also stacked a 5mm spacer on top of that to give me the width I needed (yes, you can do that). I needed only 10mm spacers for the front, so I picked those up on eBay and they actually came with extended, 50mm lug bolts, so mounting all the way through them was not a problem. Keep in mind, you NEED spacers with a hub centric lip for the front wheels as the front hub only has a 5mm lip. So if you put a spacer on there, there won't be any lip left to mount the wheel onto.

CAUTION: If your rear lug bolts are too long they will hit the parking brake spring which is housed inside the rear hub. The Crossfire has VERY little clearance for this, so you will need new lug bolts or have to shorten the stock ones. Once the spacer is mounted to the hub, turn the wheel slowly to see if it sticks. You'll hear a nasty sound if it hits anything inside. If that happens, you need shorter bolts.

As far as installing the wheels and spacers on the car, it's really very simple.

1. Get tires mounted and balanced on new wheels
2. Jack up car and remove old wheels with 17mm socket and breaker bar.
3. Install spacers on hub with short lug bolts at rear. Torque to 81 ft/lbs (If your setup requires less than 15mm spacers, you simply rest the spacer on the hub and mount the wheel over it. Smaller spacers will not mount to the hub using bolts.)
4. Place wheel on the spacer's hub centric lip and fasten with lug bolts. Torque to 81 ft/lbs
5. Smile like an idiot as you stare at your new rims.

*Note, you will likely have to remove the wheel bearing dust covers in order to fit your wheel on. Take a pry bar and wack them with a hammer. It takes a lot of force to pry these covers off, so don't be shy about it.

So that's it. I set out to get new wheels and I learned all about offsets, bolt patterns, bore sizes, and spacers. If each of these things is not accounted for, you'll end up with a wheel that doesn't fit, or a wheel that ruins the geometry or handling of the car.
So this concludes my Wheel Guide for Noobs.

 

Looks good.
Took me alot of looking, research and driving to shops to find what I liked / wanted.

If you are planning on running large spacers on back, there is the option of changing bolt pattern to a 114.3 or a 120 or any other, and opens options up to alot more wheels combinations.
I looked into that also when I bought mine.
And if you find wheels that love and have the spacing you need but in a 114.3, there are wobble bolts (if you choose to) and the wheels can be chamfered out to a 112, that is what mine are.
When checking about doing this from a wheel shop cost was a additional $0 - $150 to do all four wheels, with purchase of wheels.

 

Yup, they can be a pain, went with 19x8.5 (F) and 20x10 (R). I had to fit 15mm hub centric spacers front and back and had to cut the bolts for the rear by 5mm to avoid contact behind the hub. My car is lowered and that presented it's own issues.

Trial and error but once you get it right it's so dammm rewarding.

 

Wow,

The new wheels on those cars really do make a difference.
I'm still confuzzed re the spacers / offset and the like though.......

Good job I don't require or fancy new wheels atm!

 

I'm surprised no one has asked concerning the cool exhaust tip you installed.

Pretty slick!

 

Thanks, it took a lot of searching before finding this and it's the closest I could get to what I really wanted.

 

I have spacers on both front and rear but I ground down some long bolts for the rear and fastened through the spacer directly to the hub, IMO, the best way. On the front I had to design a 2 piece bolt to get the right thread length and correct bolt extension. I think these 2 piece bolts are 1 of a kind.

 

I am surprised nobody has asked about my quad tips on my dual exhaust.
Angled and slanted, follows contour of rear and love the quad tip look

 

Nice tutorial. I saved it to my file; should be a sticky