Tag Archives: panasport wheel

Refining the Stance

Back to bowtie6’s birthplace for a few suspension tweaks..

First a Little History

If you look at enough TR6’s as I have through the years, you will notice very few (if any) have consistent gaps between the fenders and doors.  To help solve this problem, factory workers at the Triumph factory, added spacers between the TR6 body and the frame.  Quality back in the UK in those days was not great and on top of that, after years of use the frame would sag and the gaps had a tendency to get really bad.  Next time you go to a car show, pay close attention at any “original” TR6’s and you’ll see what I mean.

When Jim and I worked on fitting bowtie6‘s body shell on the new frame, we took a long time carefully fitting the body shell, fenders, doors, bonnet and boot lid.  I remember we actually spent HOURS doing this.  The effort was well worth:  all body gaps came out very consistent.  The downside was we had to make thicker body-to-frame spacers for the rear half of the car.  This essentially slightly “bent” the body and caused the rear half of the body shell to come up and thus exaggerate the distance between the rear tires and the rear fender.

My first set of tires on bowtie6 consisted of four Kuhmo 215/55 tires mounted on those sexy Panasport wheels.  The rears fit just fine; however the edge of the front tires rubbed the edge of the front fenders. I really didn’t any body damage so I found a pair of matching 205/55 tires for the front.  This solved the rubbing problem.

But since building a custom car is not an exact science and one must make compromises, this resulted in the car having a bit of a “rake”.  Not too bad, but when looking at bowtie6 from the side, one would notice the rear tire and fender gap was not ideal.  As a matter of fact, I remember my friend Michael reminding me the rear suspension needed some tweaking.

“Drop it down an inch”, he said.  Yeah, umm-hu.

New Tires

As noted in a previous blog article, this summer I bought a new set of tires.  This time I ditched the staggered sizing in favor of a square setup:  I bought from The Tire Rack, four 205/55 Yokohama summer-only tires.  Well, with the different tire height (remember, we went from 215/55’s to 205/55’s) the rear fender gap got really bad.

Before… (for the “after”, see the last photo at the bottom)

See what I mean?  The rear gap was not quite right.  Well, I was not about to go digging out the body/frame spacers because this would throw the body gaps all to hell.  Fortunately, Jim was able to come up with a small but effective solution to the problem.

Solution and New Stance

When Jim modified the rear axle to handle the coilovers, he made vertical mounting pads for them to bolt on to.  You can see the outline of the pads in the photo above.  Today, we took all this apart and added an extender to the pad.  This extender basically moves the axle about an inch upwards.

And the result is amazing!

Before the tweak…

After the tweak…

And there you have it!  The rake is almost gone.  Jim and I measured the end result and there is about a quarter of an inch difference between the and of the front fender and the start of the rear frame along the center of the body shell.  The gap has been reduced dramatically and overall bowtie6 has a much more refined stance.

Before…

After…

After… (see above for the “before” version)

Triumph TR4/TR6 Wheel & Tire Sizing

A few days ago, I received an email from a reader (thank you Richie) asking to know more about Triumph TR4/TR6 wheel & tire sizing as fitted to our cars.  I thought this might be helpful for others so I decided to take a few pics and show you what we have installed.

My Cousin’s TR4 Wheels and Tires

The email from Richie mentioned he had never seen a TR4 with 16″ Panasport wheels as in the case of my cousin Jim’s TR4.  The wheels are Panasport in the “standard” size for a TR6: which is 16 x 7 inch, zero offset as indicated by the following picture from taken from one of the boxes.

Richie also mentioned in his email that this wheels size would be too wide for a stock TR4 because the wheel would make contact with the leaf spring.  I suppose this is correct, however in our case this is not an issue because the rear suspension on my cousin’s TR4 is using coilovers instead of a leaf spring.  As seen in the following picture the wheel/tire package fits very nicely without the need for any sort of wheel spacers.  On closer look on the picture below, the rear wheel looks a bit “off” but that is just because of the way the surface is below the tire.  There is a dip in the driveway ahead of the concrete pad.

IMG_1380Here is a picture from the back of the car just to show the profile.  It is a little dark – sorry about that, I took this with my cell phone – but you can see the tires don’t stick out too far out from the fender edges.

IMG_1382So now lets talk about tire size.  My cousin decided on a set of Bridgestone Turanza 185-55 R 16 as show below, on all four wheels.  They are a little narrow, but they work well.  If I am not mistaken, these tires came from a local Discount Tire store.

IMG_1383bowtie6‘s (TR6) Wheels and Tires

I have the same wheels as fitted to the TR4 on my TR6.  However, the tire sizes are quite different.  My first attempt was a set of matching Kumho 215-55 16’s.  This worked very well and gave bowtie6 a very aggressive look.  However, the front tires in this size were just too wide and on cornering I heard the edges of the tire digging into the front fenders.  I did not want to push my luck and have further problems so I bought a set of matching Kumho 205-55 16’s for the front.

This is what the 205-55 16’s look like on the front:

IMG_1387Here are the rear 215-55 16’s:

IMG_1386And finally, what this combination looks like showing the profile:

IMG_1384

The Kumho’s have been very good and have lasted about as long as you would expect from a “summer performance” tire.  When new, these tires were very soft and sticky, however after almost 18,000 miles they are now showing quite a bit of wear.  They are also much harder and need replacing.  More than likely I will be ordering a new set of BFGoodrich tires, just like the ones I recently bought for my Honda S2000 and they were sourced from The Tire Rack.  They are also “summer performance” tires and I anticipate good service from them.

Just as in the case with my cousin Jim’s TR4, my frame has coilovers and clearance is not an issue.  Finally, bowtie6 does not use any form of wheel spacers.

What about size for the next set of tires?  Well, I have been struggling with this a bit.  The staggered 205/55 front and 215/55 rear gives the car just a tad of rake that I really like.  The downside is not being able to rotate tires.  So the question is whether to go for the staggered look or just buying four 205/55 16’s for all corners.  Stay tuned, I’ll have an update when I make up my mind!  😉

Final Thoughts and Considerations

Please keep in mind as you study these pictures that we have custom made frames under out cars.  The frames and suspensions were specifically designed in order to give the necessary room for clearance between the wheels and all other components without having to resort to dreadful spacers.

As a side note though, I did use the staggered setup along with the Panasports on my TR6’s factory original frame before it broke.  In the front though, the upper “A” arms had to be trimmed just a tad in order to clear the wheel weights on the front wheels.  The rears though, fit perfectly with the stock TR6 trailing arms.  So a 16 x 7″ Panasport will fit on a TR6.

Another trick that is not easily visible is the way both TR4 and TR6 body shells are mounted on our frames.  You see, we made spacers in order to adequately raise the body just a small amount in order to make things line up properly.  This required a little “thinking outside the box” but the end result turned out very nice indeed.

And there you have it.  If you have any questions, suggestions or comments they are all welcome.  Just fill in a comment below and I will be happy to elaborate some more.

Update:

More info about tires on a TR6 here: Yokohama ADVAN Neova AD08 on a Triumph TR6