I have my eyes on a used staggered set of style 124 xi fitment wheels: F: 8x18 ET43 and R: 9x18 ET55 .
This came stock on 535xi cars.
I 'd like to make it my winter set and install 4 tires of the same size : say 245x45x18 to allow for tire rotation.
I cleared this with tirerack: the 245 wide tire can be installed on a rim 8 - 9.5" wide.
The rears may look a little wider as a result per tirerack.

Now, what I am looking to answer is whether my front wheel well will clear 9" wide rear wheel when I rotate them.
Or any other issues (cosmetic or not) that can possibly arise from this setup?

 

The wheel might fit on the front but there is no way you will want to drive around with lower offset wheels on the front of your car... If you want to rotate it you will have to swap the tires from one wheel to the other.

 

I'm trying to figure this out too. My suspicion is the X Drive will malfunction if you have different sized tires in the rear vs. the front. To be more specific, I think it will malfunction if the tires in the rear have a different amount of revolutions per mile vs. the fronts. Anybody out there have experience with this?

 

I understand your desire to install 4 same-sized winter tires ... however, while it may be inconvenient I recommend you use the BMW recommended tire sizes that are proper fitment for your staggered wheel set.
Besides, in my experience the way BMWs suspensions and alignments are set up they don't take kindly to wheel and tire rotations.

As a side note - hope you folks in Colorado are staying safe!!

 

The idea here is to keep the same tire circumference in front and rear, otherwise the differentials will eventually fail due to overload.
My concern/question was more about running the 9.5 inch wide rear rim in the front once I rotate the wheels.


PS. These forest fires are crazy, entire state is in smoke, the hotels are full of evacuees.
I am surprised how unprepared individual states are to fight forest fires and how little machinery is available..

 

I'm SHOCKED that it's not all over the news. If I didn't hear about the fires via word of mouth and the OCCASIONAL reference on the news, I don't think we'd know about it at all. America is apparently too busy worrying about what the celebrities are up to or whether or the Treyvon Martin case. Ridic!

 

If you put wider, lower offset wheels on the front even you will be cussing yourself out for how bad it looks. lol... even if they physically fit you will be so bummed on it you might want to keep those depression meds closeby and stay away from any sharp objects.

 

Ya DEFINITELY not good to put the wider wheels up front. Just in the rear.

 

Okay so I'm looking to put 20" ADV1's on my E61.

I'm thinking Hankook Ventus V12's in:

285/30/20 Front
Diameter: 26.8"
Revolutions per Mile: 776

255/35/20 Rear
Diameter: 27"
Revolutions per mile: 769

I'm hoping that since the RPM's are so close, this will not mess with the X Drive system. Thoughts anyone?

Here' s the wheels w/ the finish I'll be ordering - ADV7 Deep Concave in Black w/ Gloss Black Finish:

 

I hear the allowed tolerance for BMW and some other cars (Acura MDX in my case) is 4/32" in radius (or thread depth) between tires.
Audi is less than 4/32".

So you need to make sure your tires are close to 8/32" dia vs 0.2" in your case, which is in a ballpark.
AND PLEASE can we switch to metrics system for god's sake!!!