I'm planning to buy a set of aftermarket wheels for my up-coming car which will come with solar sunroof, thus 15'' factory wheels. While I'm pretty much decided on getting 17'' ones, I'm not quite sure about the exact wheel specs (width, offset, backspacing, etc) and tire size(205/50-17 vs 215/45-17). Can someone please help? Since my car is Pearl white (same as Blizzard white in US?) with sunroof, I would like to get a set of black wheels. Don't think Enkei is available here in Europe, so maybe O.Z. Supertourisimo, or maybe Tenzo Type-M. BS Bildeler AS - Bilstereo, Styling, Performance og bilrekvisita A search on this page returns quite a few nice looking wheels.
18's look great on the GenIII while 17s will give you a wider selection of LRR tires and provide a less jarring ride. Either one will perform beyond the limits of the rest of the vehicle. If it was my car I'd go with 18s.
I don't think this site ships to Europe but they are good for reference purposes. This is a search of 17" wheels for the Prius and it shows 93 wheels. Wheels for 2011 Toyota Prius V Looks like most of them use an offset of about 38 to 42 mm, the bolt pattern is 5-100, width is 7" or 7.5" Most tire manufacturers recommend a 7" rim width for 215/45-17 tires and 6.5" for 205/50-17. I would contact the tire manufacturer to be sure but I suspect that 205/50 size on 7" wide rims would be OK.
Are you looking for 17inch wheels to run a typical after market tire or are you looking for a low rolling resistance tire package?
17" Wheel choice is irrelevant with regards to running LRR tires as most wheels that fit the Prius are 17x7" so 205/50/17 and 215/45/17 will fit.
We were talking about 17s. So tell me, what is the most common specs for 17" wheels on the Prius? Do you see many 17x9" wheels? 17x6?
All depends on the rims you get. 17x6 is not common but 17x9 is pretty common when you look at the JDM aftermarket. Most 17" tires have a rim width range of 6-8" or 7-9", even including some LRR tires. However, personally I wouldn't do 17x9 cause it might rub the fender but that's another story. Now.... if I were to entertain the idea of doing rims on my car, I would go with 16x7 +35 offset (Work Emotion CR-Kais shown below). That way I wouldn't even have to get new tires. My Turanza EL400s can stretch to a 7" width. BTW, will +35mm fit the Gen II? I remember the safe range being +38 to +45.
That is exactly my point. I couldn't care less about eclectic tuners as they do not represent the general Prius population. Andino felt the need to correct me but there is nothing to correct. 17x7 is the most common wheel size and the 215/45/17 is the most commonly use tire size on the Prius and they have more LRR tires available than the 18" tire sizes. That is all I was trying to say.
The reason I originally asked the question, is that i am looking for wheels for my new 2011 Prius and am not sure what direction to go. I have done some research and there are so many choices. I only researched lightweight wheel options and true JDM wheels. If I decide to run the ECO specific wheel route, I found that this to be the common sizes: 16x6.0 WEDS Louresh, CE28 eco, RE30 eco, 707 eco 17x7.0 CE28 eco, RE30 eco, 707 eco 18x7.0 WEDS Louresh and RE30 Now if I was looking for lightweight forged or semiforged wheels, then most of the wheels tend to be race wheels. Although there a ton of choices in regards to cast wheels, but tend to be very heavy. Since the Prius is 5x100 most of the wheels are designed for Subarus and 17x7 is not really available in 5 lug, most 5x100 tend to be 16x7.0, 17x7.5~9, and 18x7.5+ So the dilemma is, go with ECO lightweight wheels specifically designed for hybrid vehicles and pick a LRR tire and maintain gas mileage or go with a lightweight race wheel, better offset, make the car look aggressive but risk losing some mileage. Feedback on anyone with aggressive offset lightweight wheels on their car, how much gas mileage was lost?
Gruppe-S, I can understand your dilemma. I have read a few posts where Prius GenII owners had installed lightweight 15" wheels and could not really measure a MPG difference. I think they were using Ray's or something similar that weighed approx. 10lbs vs. 15lbs. for OEM 15" wheels. If one were to hypothesis that the lower weight wheels provided less of an improvement/declination of MPG than does the choice of tires, I would say buy the wheels you like and don't sweat the weight unless you start getting over 22lbs or so. Just get something you love and try to find the best tire you can that fits your needs. If you go with a LRR tire you will likely notice less of a MPG drop so that would be my advice. Ohh and for the record, the 17" OEM GenIII wheels are approx. 24lbs and yet with LRR tires equipped the MPG drop is within a few MPG of the OEM 15" wheels. On my car the swap to lightweight 17" wheels equipped with high performance tires (non-LRR) drops my mph by approx. 6mpg. That is my anecdotal evidence that the wheel weight matters less than the tire choice. Unless all you do is short city-based trips with tons of stop and go traffic. Then the wheel weight may matter more.
If you go with a lightweight racing wheel, it will only affect mileage if heavier than stock. Check the Motegi Traklights, weighing 10 lbs per 15x6 compared to 16 lbs per stock steelie.
I have the 16x6.5 Motegi Traklites, with LRR Continental tires. Wheels are forged and weigh about 12lbs each. As for mileage, drop is about 2-3 MPGs from the stock 15s... but the caveat is that I tend to drive a bit more aggressively with my current set up then with the stocks. As a comparison, I had the OEM Gen III 17s but was running with non-LRR tires. MPG drop was about 4-6, sometimes in the 8s if I wanted to have some fun. These wheels are super heavy and you can really feel the drag upon acceleration. As F8L mentioned, if you tend to do a lot of city driving (surface streets with lots of stoplights), this will really affect the MPG loss.
Even with my 17s weighing only 15lbs, the tire friction makes the car feel so much more sluggish from a stop than my OEM 15s with dB Super E-Spec tires. It feels like I'm dragging an anchor behind me. I can only imagine what the OEM GenIII 17s feel like compared to a 15" LRR setup. Thanks for the additional info.
HI MPG, Thanks for all the info, that Motegi is a really light wheel, I had no idea they offered something so light. Although Motegis are pretty nice, I would really like to keep the car with Japanese wheels, I have been struggling about what to put on my Prius. I decided to go with 17's because I am realizing that the tire is vital in maintaining mileage. So 17s seem to have the best selection. I have researched the Volk stuff, but the pricing seems a bit too high and didn't want to go with a high offset ECO only wheel.. I am leaning with Enkei and the WEDS racing wheels, they are all 17x8 with offsets in the 40s. I believe the wheels will be very flush and to the edge of the fender and may stretch the tire more than the factory look. Does anyone know how offset might affect gas mileage, anyone with wider wheels on their Prius? The 2 wheels I am looking at will weigh around 15.5lbs and decided on a LRR tire. Thanks for everyone's valuable input and information.
