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Managed to find a set of Apex EC-7 wheels secondhand for a bargain price on eBay. Big thanks to titium for picking them up for me in Sydney!
Specs:
Fronts: Toyo R888 225/40/18 8.5" ET45
Rears: Toyo R888 255/35/18 9.5" ET58
Apex seems to be one of the very few performance oriented wheels with correct offsets for maximum rubber for these cars. They are a pain to import from the USA and hence are quite hard to come by in Australia. I have not been happy with any of the local wheel choices and was waiting for a set to come up secondhand, so I snapped these up as soon as they popped up on ebay. The perch clearance is very close up front, I had to raise the perch to gain a little extra clearance. There is probably around 5mm gap between the tyre and the lower spring perch. I have a 5mm and 10mm spacers at my disposal if I want a tad more clearance but should be ok as is. I would prefer not to run spacers if possible. Very happy with the Anthracite colour which gives a bit of contrast to the Alpine White
These Toyos run extremely wide with square sidewalls, the fronts looks similar sizing to a regular (ie non performance tyre) 245 sized tyre, and the rears are quite bulged on a 9.5" rim and look similar to a 265 or even 275 width. These tyres are not known to be that great for the street, they have very stiff sidewalls which feel significantly harsher over bumps, and are very noisy. At 50kph the noise from the tyres is quite unpleasant, youd really only want to run these on a weekend car.
Outright grip I have not driven the car enough yet, the grip is adequate on the street but nothing special, can still get a bit of DSC intervention. The tyres feel very harsh, but the upside is the steering feels a bit more direct. I am not sure if you can get enough temperature (around 70-100 degrees C tyre temps) with street use to get the most out of them. I will be saving these tyres for a track day but will run AD08Rs on the street. I have a set of unused 0km tyres on my 18" 313 rims so will be keen to get them on for street driving.
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