Re: Tires size for S70 on 18x8" Wheels (irollturbo)
I got around to rolling the rear fenders yesterday. It's not a bad job with the right tools and some patience. I haven't had a chance to test the clearances with a loaded car again, but there appears to be plenty of room now.
As an aside, the ride quality with the 225-40/18s has been just fine for me. As I had mentioned in a previous post, bumps feel a bit sharper, but not any harder. I have since driven on some pretty bumpy roads and my opinion regarding ride remains the same. However, that's not to say that the 18s won't be more prone to damage when encountering a wheel swallowing pot hole. I should also mention that the tires I have on there have received good reviews for ride quality.
Rolling the fenders addresses the clearance issues on the outside of the tire against the fender lip. While I had the wheels off the car I did see some signs of inner rub (caused when turning onto inclines). The inner rub was between the wheel lip and one of the fender liner retaining bolts and caused some scratches to the inner wheel surface. Not a big deal, but any wheel weights attached to the wheel lip would have surely been knocked off. Better to use the glue-on weights even on the inside due to this. I got out my dremel tool and cut back the fender liner retaining bolt a bit more.
There is also some sight rub at full lock in front on the inside of the tire against the fender liner. This is not enough to worry about. The rear fender lip was my big problem.
I wasn't able to find any good information on how to roll the rear fenders on the S70, so I thought I would post my experience here. I have rolled the rear fender on a 240, but the big unknown for me was how to handle the rear plastic fender liner on the S70. As it turns out, this was not a big issue.
The tools I used for the job were a fender roller, heat gun, infrared thermometer, 10mm deep socket, tin snips (for the plastic), dremel tool with cutoff wheel (for that retaining bolt), as well as jack, jack stands, and normal wheel removal tools.
Once the car is on the jack stands with the wheels off, the first step in the process is to trim back the plastic fender liner. I recommend doing this first so that the liner is out of the way and in the right position when the metal rolling is done.
To start the trimming process I began by first removing the liner plastic where it covers the fender lip itself. The liner makes a right angle turn to cover the lip. When bending this back the plastic pretty much snapped at the right angle on its own (old, dry, brittle plastic). I just had to help it along by cutting the plastic with the tin snips here and there. I removed this plastic lip from the point there the wheel well meets the bumper cover at rear to a point just under where the rear fender meets the door at front. The front point was somewhat arbitrary. I only wanted to do enough rolling to address my tire clearance issue, so there was no reason to trim the fender liner all the way.
Here is a picture of how things look at this point. You can see the liner lip trimmed away and the liner extending down along the back of the metal fender lip.
The goal is to get the liner to tuck up and behind the lip. This will get it out of the way, and when the fender is rolled, it will be secured in place. As you can see from the picture there is still to much liner material for this to happen. The next step is to trim the liner up just enough so it can tuck into the fender lip.
When doing this trimming you will run into these locating tabs in the plastic as shown in the picture below.
I just cut those tabs away - just put a cut on each side of it, bend it back, and cut it off so it doesn't get it in the way later. With tabs cut out and the liner trimmed up and tucked behind the fender lip, the following picture shows what things look like.
In the above picture you can also see the bolt I mentioned earlier that was scraping the inside of the wheel. That lower right (rear) bolt - the one with the slightly rusted color - is the one to trim down with the dremel tool.
The next step is to roll the metal fender lip back. In the process it will secure the plastic liner in place. The Tirerack web site has some pretty good instructions that cover the fender rolling. I bought the fender rolling tool from them. In order to attach the tool to the wheel hub I had to remove the 10mm rotor retaining bolt/ wheel locating stud. This let me get all the holes lined up on the hub. The fender roller came with spacers to allow the original wheel bolts to be used to secure the tool.
When rolling the metal it is important to keep the paint warm to avoid cracking. I used a heat gun for this as shown in the following picture.
The target temperature is 120-140 degrees Fahrenheit. I measured this with an infrared thermometer as shown below.
The rolling process is done a little at a time - heat a little, roll a little, heat a little, roll a little. I started at top center and worked my way to one side and then the other bending the metal just a bit. After this I adjusted the roller on the tool to a slightly more vertical position and repeated the process and bending the metal a little more. This is done repeatedly with the roller becoming more and more vertical. The following pictures show this progression.
I was able to do both sides with no damage to the paint. The following picture shows what it looked like after the rolling. You can also get a look at the tool in this picture.
From the outside of the fender you can see that the rolling is not visible.
I then repeated the process for the other side of the car, which you can see below.
The next set of pictures shows the car back on the ground (car unloaded)
(White mark on fender lip in the picture below is some sort of reflection)
(Angle of camera makes clearance look like a country mile)
While I was at it, I replaced the front rotors and pads (off topic, but I had the pic)
The process of rolling the fenders was really not too bad. The biggest hurdle for me was overcoming the fear factor - fear of ruining the car. As I mentioned, I have also done some fender rolling on a Volvo 240; while that car has no plastic liner, the metal was much thicker and harder to work with. Once the liner was removed on the S70, working the metal was like working with aluminum foil by comparison.
I ended up doing the job myself, because it proved impossible to find someone to do this work. I guess there is fear of damaging the paint. This is something that can happen to anyone even if careful. So keep that in mind should you embark on this journey yourself.
I'm happy with the result and very happy to be into the 225 width tires, which offer more choices. I do like the looks of the 18" pegs better than the 17" having had both. These 18's are the Titanium color as opposed to the white silver. I was worried about putting this color on a Silver car, but I think it looks fine. These Titanium pegs are the first wheels I've had that seem to look better as the get dirty.
