I’m heading over to AutoKraft next week to check out their progress on prepping the Nova for paint. Kurt and his team have been working on it for the last couple of weeks, so I’m anxious to see it!
In the meantime, I thought I’d share a few pictures of my wheels and tires that came in recently. I decided to go with Forgeline’s SE3C Concave wheels, which are a three piece forged wheel. I went with an 18x11 with a deep concave profile in the rear and an 18x9 with a shallow concave profile up front, which will give a staggered look. The inner hoops are satin black powder coated, as are the wheel centers. The outer hoop has a reverse flat lip and a brushed finish that is then clear coated. Center caps are also powder coated satin black with red and white Forgeline logo.
For tires, I looked for the best combination of a really sticky tire for braking, cornering and dead hook when accelerating (I’m expecting a little over 700hp at the crank and the Nova is pretty light...), and if they look good, that’s a bonus, too. After a lot of research, I ended up with Toyo R888Rs, and am really excited to try them out. They’re Toyo’s DOT competition road course tire and while they’re designed for great handling on dry surfaces (and they’re serviceable in wet conditions), they apparently hook really well from a dig, too. A lot of Hellcat owners have put these on their cars and they rave about the night and day difference in traction (Hellcats are notorious for not being able to put power down as you can’t stuff much wheel width under them).
I went with a 305/35/18 on the rear and a 255/35/18 up front. DSE recommends a maximum 295 width tire on the rear with their mini tubs for first gen cars. However, Kurt measured things up and is confident we have enough clearance for a 305 width, so we went with that. Should fill the wheel wells nicely
I’m really excited to see these on the car and check out the stance. We need to order some new wheel studs first as the existing ones are way too long. Once we get the new wheel studs installed, we’ll test fit the wheels and I’ll post some pictures. In the meantime, here are some pictures of the wheels after getting them unpacked. I think the wheel style should look great on the Nova and the color should compliment nicely the red Wilwood calipers and 14” rotors!
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