Aircooled VW South Africa

Hi Volks;

I found this pic while searching TheSamba. I really like the look of a chromed wide5 rim on a Ghia. I even have some ideas on how to customise it further. They can be made to look quite trick if done right.

Thoughts?

That looks awesome, the wheels sorta looks like chromed & widened 356 wheels..

That does look good....

I can't see the pic - anyone else ?

Those wheels look to be Mangels.........I have the same on my speedster.

Oh? I thought these were the standard Beetle wide 5s just chromed. No?

I can't be 100% sure as the picture appears to be taken with a potato, but there looks to be slots in those wheels, which would peg them as 356 or mangels.

Understood. Slots in the rim aside; I guess my question is, can one achieve the same/similar look if one chromes the standard Beetle wide 5s?

hell yeah, you'd have to widen the beetle rims though to get a bit of a dish.......

Nice !!! Does look VERY much just about exactly the same as standard Beetle rims!

Another question:

What's the widest tyre one can fit on a standard Beetle wide 5 rim? 165/85-15 was the original spec if my memory serves. How wide can one go?
The reason for the question is Karmann Ghia have restrictive wheel wells and it would be good to know how wide one could go with tyre width without the malarkey of fettling fenders or searching for rims with the approriate offset. I'm a philistine whennit comes to the technical aspects of wheel offsets and the rest. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

AKG1600 wrote:Another question:

What's the widest tyre one can fit on a standard Beetle wide 5 rim? 165/85-15 was the original spec if my memory serves. How wide can one go?
The reason for the question is Karmann Ghia have restrictive wheel wells and it would be good to know how wide one could go with tyre width without the malarkey of fettling fenders or searching for rims with the approriate offset. I'm a philistine whennit comes to the technical aspects of wheel offsets and the rest. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Depends on what size the rim is, there was a few different OEM rim widths, if you modify the rim (make it wider) they can change the offset for you so the wheel goes wider to the inside, you will sacrifice the dish look a bit then, all this will need to get done with careful measurements so you don't touch anything on the inside wheel well with the tire/rim, especially in the front as the wheels obviously turn from side too. Also you need to take into consideration if the car is lowered or not.
I don't know the limitations of a Karmann, but at the moment I have at stock suspension height, 195/65/15 on my beetle(1303) and they are fine, don't touch anywhere.