Okay so no excuses but I enlisted at 17 was a father by 21 ...so if it cranked, moved , and rolled where I wanted it to , then I was good. Never gave a thought to tires , needed a new one just had them put whatever was on there before ....NOW however I have begun to try and find unique look wheels that suit me , after only a few hours over the course of a few days I now have a headache and am starting to drool ...not the sharpest tool in the shed when it comes to this ...

I find my self perplexxed over things like ...

1) what the hell is the diff between fwd & rwd ... really where the powertrain is located determines the wheels i can use? does this really matter ?

What I want seems simple to me but apperantly not ...

I want something old school looking more wheel , less gaps , I like what alot of you guys have done with the open spoke styles but its just not "me"

2) Can anyone suggest a brand or website that might have more along the lines of what Im looking for ...

3) sizes ??? 16's or 17's ?


Can any of you guys "idiot Proof " some of this for me ?

 

I have 17's on my HHR Shadow Edition, and I think it nicely fills in the wheel wells.

 

Thanx for the input ...do the 17's effect yer miallage much?
well I know our bolt pattern is 5x110 and a factory stock offset is +42

do you know yer width and offsets ?

 

FWD-Front Wheel Drive
RWD-Rear Wheel Drive
Depends which are the drive wheel the vehicle uses. In the case of the HHR, it's FWD. Does it matter, well that depends on you.

To remove wheel gap you have to do one thing and/or another. Lower the vehicle or add larger diameter wheel/tire combo. Or both. Adding a larger diameter combo will alter your speedo, here is a site that you can compare tire sizes. There are others, but I like this one.
http://www.1010tires.com/TireSizeCal...?action=submit

For the HHR, you do have obsticles that limit the overall height of the tire. On the front it's the lower strut plate. Here is my 26" tall 225/45 18 compared to the bottom of the strut plate..


For the rear, you have the splash shield, several have cut and modified that for additional clearance. But there are not too many options for the front.

On a stock wheel, width plays a factor. Some have went with 245mm wide tires and gotten away with it. Some have also indicated some slight rubbing, so YMMV......

For aftermarket wheels, you will run into the same for clearance and depending on the offset may rub in various locations also.

I think the biggest wheel I'v seen on a HHR is a 20" with a 30 series tire. But your local roads may not like that combo.

 

I guess it depends on how old your school was....

Bigger wheels are modern, smaller wheels with larger tires are old school to me....... When I was in school and just out of high school 14's and 15's were all we had for wheels but we put some big tires on them. Cragar S/S were THE wheel if one could afford them (those are the "spokes" you don't like) So that's the look I go for. Because of availability and fitment over the disk brakes there are limitations in choice so I used 16's to replace my 17's and made up the difference with tire height. As close as I could get and they look great to me..... (225/55R16 is what I ended up with on the chrome Euromax 612's, If they had been available I would have tried to squeeze 235/55's on there but they were "discontinued" )

FWD vs. RWD does matter, the offset is totally different. FWD cars have the hubs set much further out than RWD cars, this was done originally to reduce torque steer. Some modern RWD cars now have the hubs set out further, Solstice for example.... RWD but those wheels fit our FWD cars. For the most part though if you could find RWD wheels that would bolt up they would stick out of the fenders and the car would not handle very well. Too much wheel to the outside of the hub can introduce torque steer on a FWD car, besides all the issues of fender rub/tire damage etc.


Bottom line, in order to fit the HHR overall diameter of the tire shouldn't be more than 26" to fit the front and not much more than that to fit the rear. (ABS, etc. says stick to the same size, yadda yadda) So...... 5X110 is your bolt pattern, offset is around 40. Do a search and your not going to find much in the way of "older style" looking wheels in 16" or 17" sizes because the modern trend is larger wheel (18's 20's etc) and multi spoke styles.

Just my $.02.... or was that more like $.05.

 

But you can still have the appeal of old school, with the size of new school.

Ogre999, my 17's still net me about 29.5mpg on average, and have also netted me 32.2mpg on a (3 hour tour) ok, well 4, but still. 32.2 is not bad.

 

It sounds like you are asking more about wheels than about tires.
The simplest solution - go to www.tirerack.com or www.1010tires.com or www.discounttiredirect.com and use their wheel browser by entering your vehicles year make and model. Choose the ones you like most, tirerack and discounttire even let you see how they look on an HHR.
I went for my own version of a retro look using cadillac wheels though, and as my tires will be worn out next year, I will be going with bigger ones to fill out the wheel wells a little more.

 

Great man Ill Paruse those Prod and when I decide Ill postem here , thanks Brau for taking the time to set me up Y'all ...yer just too cool for school.