Offset

[Black67SS]

I know this has been talked to death but a friend of mine has a set of wheels and tires 18x8.5 with +15 offset and 18x9.5 with the same +15 offset.245/40 and 275/40 tires.Can I make these work on my 67' Camaro?I don't know if i'm oldschool but i'm still having trouble gettin my head around offset vs. backspace.
Thanks

[Satatic]

http://www.wheelsmaster.com/rt_specs.jsp
I been using this to compair wheels and tire details. Just put in the info and it will tell you what the backspace is

[b-man]

Offset is measured from the centerline of the wheel to the hub mounting face.

Backspace is measured from the back edge of the rim lip to the hub mounting face.

Keep in mind that every wheel is actually one inch (give or take a little) wider than the measured rim width from measuring lip to lip. The measured rim width is from the outer edges of tire mounting bead inside the rim lips.

Your 8.5" front rim is 9.5" wide lip to lip, you need to be aware of this to get a backspace measurement. Forget about the 8.5" number for now. Divide that 9.5" by 2 and you get 4.75". If your 8.5" wheel had zero offset it would have 4.75" of backspacing, make sense?

Your 15mm of positive offset moves the hub mounting face outward from the centerline. Add that 15mm (.590") positive offset to the 4.75" measurement from the back edge of the rim to the wheel centerline and you have a wheel with 5.34" of backspacing.

It's fairly simple math. But you just need to wrap your head around the simple relationship between offset and backspacing to make sense of it.

[Black67SS]

OK I figured the backspace/offset is doeable but is there a reason nobody uses a 8.5 wheel on the front?All I see mentioned for first gen Camaros are 8".