Advice Needed For Fitting Alloy Wheels

[bigshorty]

Hi All

Need some help with fitting some alloys to my 06 Focus 1.6 TDCI. Car is currently on steel wheels.

I bought some alloys that were on an 06 Focus, not genuine ford ones though, and took them to my local tyre chap to see if they'd fit. Yes they did fit, until the wheel nuts were put on. There was only 3 turns of the nut until they were seated on the wheel, and the fitter said that wasn't enough, he said he'd like a good 7 turns of the nuts before he was happy that it was safe. He said the only way to fit them was to fit longer studs.

Anyway, I managed to sell the alloys at a profit, but my query is would genuine Ford alloys fit without the need to fit longer studs to the hubs? Or would I need to change the studs to fit any alloy onto my car? Is there an easy get around for having short studs?

Any advice is appreciated.

Cheers.

[stef123]

Yes genuine alloys will fit absolutely fine. You will need alloy wheel nuts for them though.

[bigshorty]

Thanks for the reply. Just got to find a good set now.

I sort of knew alloy nuts would be another issue. Any ideas where I can get a goodish set, without paying masses would be very welcome?

Cheers again

[WES180]

Loads of used alloy nut sets on eBay.

[stef123]

Yup as above check eBay, also look for people breaking cars.

[bigshorty]

Nice one! Cheers for all your help.

[troy45]

You might have gotten away with a different set of wheel nuts on the aftermarket wheels - Ford oem wheels have much larger holes for the wheel nuts to seat into, their standard wheel nuts have a couple of mm lead-in with no thread present but the larger bore holes lets the nuts go further onto the studs.

I had same problem originally trying to use the Ford wheel nuts on my Oz wheels, had to bite the bullet and use the aftermarket wheel nuts my mate gave me with the wheels when I bought them. You get 6-7 turns on these before they go tight.

Just need to be careful using these nuts on standard Ford wheels as they're too narrow for mating well with the larger bore holes.

[bigshorty]

After reading what you had put on this post Troy, I have to say I was rather gutted as I came across the wheel nuts you mentioned, after selling the alloys. Typical!!

Anyway, I've sourced a few sets of alloys, but I need some advice on Offset values. I'm looking around the internet for some info regarding this and some sites mention that I can use wheels with an offset of 46 - 55 mm, then others will say offset needs to be 35 - 43 mm. I've found a set that have an offset of 52.5 mm and I'm a bit lost as to whether these would go on my car, as I don't really have a clue as to the correct requirements. Unfortunately, I'm going to have to travel some distance to get them, none local to me, so I can't just pop out to try one on. Does anyone know the correct offset values for my Focus?

Any advice or ideas would be well appreciated.

[salsheikh]

depends on which car they came off.

i had a set of 19's that came off a Laguna and they fitted fine - they had the standard larger lug hole. My new aftermarket wheels had the smaller lug holes so had to buy new locking nuts but im happy with the result.

gone from this (19" bbs ch wheels off a laguna)

to this

18" jade r alloys (off a Jag x Type)