I currently have a 2008 Infiniti G35x with the OEM 17" wheels. I'm in the process of looking to purchase some 19" wheels (19x8.5) and accompying tires (245x40x19).

My goal is to basically fill the gab between the wheel and fender without lowering the vehicle, but another main concern is that I do not want the car to look like it has been raised up due to the larger rims. Will this be the case based on the sizing that I've specified in the first paragraph, or will I have to lower the car?

Please...any help would be greatly appreciated as I'm not too acquainted with wheels, rims, tires, lower, etc.

Thanks in advance!

 

Im no expert but yea, to lose the gap between your tires and fender, you need a drop.
unless you want really fat tires, that would look pretty ugly IMO

 

what you describe will raise the front of the vehicle about 1/3 in. that tire size is the rear size which runs a little bigger than the fronts.

What you want to do is impossible! IN order to fill up the gap, you WILL HAVE to either lower it or get bigger tires which will raise orerall height.

Look into stock 370Z springs.. i believe they fit, shouldnt be too expensive, and keep ride close to stock.. not sure how much it'll lower your car but the thread i linked is very informative.. i just dont have time to read thru it right now.

https://g35driver.com/forums/v36-bra...xperiment.html

 

That will give you almost an exact match. The car will be just a hair lower but not enough to hardly measure since the circumference will be be just .1% less. This should give you the illusion of the car being lower, the effect will vary based on color of the car, the rims selected etc. The appearance gap is a combination of the actual gap between tire and fender and since that gap will blend in with the tire it can tend to look like it is much less with a larger wheel and lower profile tire. This is very close and maybe exactly what I did with my Chrysler 300M. I selected 19s since that allowed me to maintain the same diameter which I would not have been able to do going with an 18 inch or 20 inch wheel, at least at the time I did it. I would have to look but I think the tire size you mention is also what I ended up with.

The one negative appearance in my mind was seeing through the wheels I selected which was something I wasn't planning on, I wasn't looking for the rubber band look of tires which it gave a little bit of that look depending on angle.

Another far more serious negative is a larger diameter wheel can give you decreased brake performance depending on the location of the rotating mass. Not only the weight of the wheel is important but where that weight is located.

A positive compared to lowering the car is that of handling. While going to a lower center of gravity can be beneficial a good deal is lost because of the rest of the geometry of the suspension has changed. And of course with an X in snow, you maintain your ground clearance.

 

This tire size calculator show it to be just a hair less in height, not greater:

http://www.miata.net/garage/tirecalc.html

Also the stock tires are the same all the way around on an X.

 

Only way to properly close wheel gap is by lowering the car.

 

Thanks pfarmer! I was hoping someone would chime in to say that it would be equal. Since I'm going bigger on the rims, and less rubber on the tires that the height of the vehicle would be the same.

 

I agree with not lowering the car, that is unless you lower it the correct way which is very difficult to do. When you lower a car in the conventional way you are really only lowering part of it since much of the suspension stays attached to its original points on a unibody type of car. In the old days with a frame you could channel the body, redo the frame, etc. without changing geometry at all. That is no longer the case.

The point about the brakes are critical. If you move the same weight as the stock wheels further out from the center you need more braking power just to stop the wheels. Everything can weigh exactly the same as before, in fact you can go to a slightly lighter larger diameter wheel and still have the problem. On my other car this became an issue since the stock brakes are marginal to start with. Anyway something to keep in mind. This is hard to estimate for most and I don't recall reading about anyone actually calculating it out for a road car.

The other issue I had was that the car became a little more twitchy on some roads. Especially in my local area where you have the truck tracks in the freeway and other roads. If it rains in your area you want a tire that resists hydroplaning as the wider tire will have more of a tendency to do so, I bought Toyos for that and they worked out well, actually better than the OEM.

Good luck and you may actually be able to see the effect of the larger diameter wheels on a website such as maybe Tirerack? Anyone one of them has the ability of selecting your car right down to the color and then viewing it with a series of different wheels and sizes.