blackrose

Hello everyone, I have an 2008 BMW 535XI WAGON with 17 inch stock wheels. I am looking for some wheels for summer.

- Is it possible to upgrade the stock wheels to 18 inches or 19 inches, staggered or not?
I like the style 135, style 166 and style 343 wheels.
Any pointers will be good on how to go about wheels upgrade and what to watch for.

Thank you very much!!!

habbyguy

It IS possible to upgrade the rims, but be VERY careful with staggered wheels... on your XI, you don't want the diameter of the front and rear tires to be more than about 0.5% off, or you'll stress out your transfer case (and you don't want to do that). ;-)

I had what I suspect are probably about the fattest "matched" wheels on a staggered wheel set-up on my 530xi wagon.
Rear: 10" width, offset 51mm (285/35/19)
Front 9" width, offset 51mm (245/40/19)

blackrose

That's a nice setup you have. I really like those wheels though I can't see them well but i like the design. Do you need spacers? Thanks

habbyguy

They're modular, and were built on spec by the car's previous owner. No spacers were needed.

Here's another view (shortly after I bought it, prior to mounting the proper 285 width tires on the back).

blackrose

So which style if that in the picture? I also like that they're not too loud.

habbyguy

They were some sort of custom modular wheel - I never did figure out exactly who made them.

The kind of sad thing is that I mounted a set of five-spoke silver wheels (from an X5) with some quiet road tires for my long (!) road trips, and the wife liked those so much she didn't want the "gangster wheels" back on the car... so I sold them off to a guy with an E46 M3. Sigh. I do like the new wheels OK, and now I have four identical tires (so I can rotate them, and don't have to worry about messing up my AWD system due to any size differences front to back), but I do miss those wheels and tires!

Here's the current configuration: