5 replies to this topic

[Simon350S]

Hey guys

Anybody done this??

Is it possible without too much work??? What work is needed???

Need to know!!!

[silverfrost]

possilble but a hell of a lot of hassle!

from memory s4 wheels on the later stevens esprits are pcd 5x 108mm which means 108mm between each wheel stud/bolt,

your s3 turbo is 5 x 120mm the same as mine which is why i went for bmw wheels of a z3m coupe because of the wide back wheels, i use a spacer on the front to bring the offset near to origanal spec and the bmw wheel already was et 8mm so i fitted a 40mm spacer!

to get the best idea of what is involed go to lotus esprit world g owners and look at andy hills red esprit i did what he did and the kind chap (top man) even sent me the design specs to give to an engineer to machine the adaptors! his owners page explains the whole thing and is very well written!

regards dan but yes it can be done but bmw wheels are easier and cheaper than split rims,also compomotive can make direct replacments but there bloody expensive!

[Simon350S]

Been thinking about this in a bit more depth.

How about machining new hubs? Don't think spacers/adapters would be possible due to the off set of the S4S split rims?

I know someone who works for a specialist machining company and he recons it would be possible. I guess it would be a case of removing the hubs and supplying them along with the wheels for machining.

Sound reasonable??

Do you think they would look any good on a G car??

Is it really worth doing??

Any photoshop bods out there with a little spare time??

Edited by Simon350S, 06 February 2006 - 10:33 AM.

[Simon350S]

Hi guys

I'm away with work and don't have my manuals, would anyone be able to post an exploded view of the front and rear hub assemblies so I can show my machining guy what I'm talking about.

Also does anyone happen to have a rim lying around that I could borrow for a short while??

Regards

Simon

[DrieStone]

Having done a fair amount of investigation into this, I would say you are traveling down a path that is probably the most painful. As mentioned earlier, you would be better off purchasing something new that matches the offset and bolt pattern of the existing hubs, especially if you're not quite sure if you would be happy with the newer wheels.

IMHO if you were going to spend the money to change your hubs to be a different bolt pattern, I'd go for something that is pretty mainstream (Honda, Toyota, Nissan) so you can choose from hundreds of light-weight stylish (and less expensive) wheels. Converting from pre-87 to post-88 Lotus bolt patterns doesn't really get you very far in that regard. Again, maybe you absolutely love the S4S wheels, and maybe you can't be swayed from that path, in that case, I think we'd all be interested in hearing what steps you took to mount the S4S wheels to the turbo.

If you really want to change your bolt pattern, the rears are fairly easy (unless you want to go whole hog and change from in-board to out-board brakes). You can just have a hub spacer made that changes the bolt pattern, and spaces the negative offset to whatever the S4S's offset is. The fronts you'd have to have new parts made to fit the new wheels.

Check out http://esprit.driest...p/Esprit/Wheels if you want to stick with the same bolt patterns for many of your options..

[Simon350S]

Cheers for that Jon

Just been looking at that link you gave in your post.

One think that strikes me as being a potential problem is the tyre widths involved in fitting S4S rims i.e. 235/40 17 fronts and 285/35 18 Rears!!

Still I think it may well look so good all the other issues will be worth the work. Not fussed on aftermarket alloys and would like the choice on the later style rims, seen S4 wheels on a G car, lowered, it was running an SE chassis hence it was possible but even the V8 monoblocks look good.

What about you Wayne, thought you may have some valuable input to this thread??

Another question..... Do the rear driveshafts go through the hubs, i.e. are the hubs splined (very expensive job) or do the shafts bolt to the back of the hubs?? Seem to remember them bolting to the rear of the hubs but can't be sure.

Oh yeah.. and does anyone know the ofset for the S4S split rims compared to that of the S3T rims?

Simon

Edited by Simon350S, 06 February 2006 - 03:20 PM.