Cocooningweb

Hello E60 community,

I'm proud to say that I just purchased a 2004 530i. Unfortunately the previous owner was an idiot. You wouldn't believe what he tried (tried being a keyword) to do to the car. Luckily he didn't touch the engine and the mods were mostly cosmetic. With a little time, effort and money I'll restore my E60 to its glory days.

My first project is to get the wheels fitted. The previous owner purchased 4 BMW Style 351 wheels. They look great on the back, but they don't fit in the front. Did I mention that he purchased 4 rear wheels? I have 4 19X9 with a 44mm offset!

When I bought the car he only had the back wheels on and had regular black-spray-painted-half-way-peeling-off wheels in the front. The other set of Style 351 were in the trunk. The first thing I did was to take the car to my mechanics, bought tires, mounted them and that's when I realized that these wheels wouldn't fit in the front.

The front wheels that were on the car were also 19X9 and are way too tight. He totally destroyed the front struts, as the wheels are often rubbing.

Back to my Style 351! I looked on bmwstyleswheels.com and the wheels with the widest offset that would fit my car would be a Style 269 (19X8.5 with a 18mm offset).

Am I calculating things right if I say that with a 32mm spacer on my Style 351 I would get the same clearance as the Style 269 wheels? Here's how I calculated this: 44mm offset (from 351) to 18mm offset (from 269) requires a 26mm adjustment. Because my wheels are 9" wide instead of 8.5" that's an extra 1/4" on each side of the hub, or 6mm. So 26mm + 6mm sums to 32mm.

I realize that adding spacers will add stress to the ballpoints and that the wheels may be sticking out a few mm from the fenders, but my wife won't let me spend $1,200+ to get a new set of wheels and tires at the moment.

What are your thoughts? Thanks!

FaintReality

This site should help: Online Wheel and Tyre Fitment Calculator. Offset, Tyre Stretch and Speedo Error | Will They Fit

Booyaazaa

If you are trying to fit a 9" wide wheel the highest offset I'd run is a 18mm. Anything higher you will possibly rub the strut and the above is based on you having the oem suspension. This also accounts for a 5mm buffer from the inner wheel and the strut. So yes you need to run a 26mm spacer to make it fit. I personally would not run that big of a spacer up front and iirc most reputable companies only offer up to a 20mm spacer. I'd be a better idea to just get some new 351's with the correct offsets.

Cocooningweb

Thank you that's a good resource.

Cocooningweb

Thank you for the info. I wasn't too excited about the idea of spacers that wide either, the only forums and websites where I could find any info about bigger than 20mm spacers were for offroad pickups. Not quite my ride!

Actually another member of the forum PM'd me last night offering to trade his front 351's for two of my rear ones. The offset on these would be 33mm only, I should be ok with the 20mm spacer I already purchased.