Jason Teller

ding ding ding

cimajeff

Hi, I just bot a 2006 A8L W12. It came with the optional 20" wheels, but not Sport Package (not sure if available on W12). Anyway I like the idea of spacers to move wheels out a little wider. I see you used 30mm on back and 20mm on front on your A8L. Was that with 19 or 20" wheels? Was there any rubbing at all? If there was anything you'd do different, what would that be? Thanks for any suggestions. Jeff

MP4.2+6.0

With the 20" wheels I run 20mm spacers rear and 12 mm front. You can run 25mm max in the rear and 15mm in the front, perhaps 20mm.

I tested 25 in the rear and found under extreme compression of the suspension, the tire would just barely rub the wheel well insulation. Not sure it was realistic since it was all on just one side, and I pushed the wheel way up (with a floor jack underneath basically) to do it--probably 4-6 inches of travel. In practice I never had any rubbing when I ran the 25's for several months. Net though, as a taste matter I decided the 20's look a little better--sides of tires were pretty exposed compared to the plane of the sides of the wheel wells in the rear when using the 25's.

Similarly in front, I ran 15's for a while, but the tire seemed out just a bit too far visually, particularly on the front edge and even near the top. 12's look better to me, and are the minimum width where you can buy hubcentric spacers, at least the H&R's I use.

On the other post/reader ride, what you have to be careful of is which wheels the car is running. If you have the 20's on a W12, they should be 20 x 9, ET 46. The 19's and 18's have a similar offset, but they are 8 1/2" wide. When you do the math (which basically is dividing 1/2 inch/12.5mm by two for the two halves of the wheel when doing offset calculations, it nets to using a spacer about 5-7 mm. smaller with the 9" factory offsets than with the 8 1/2" offsets. At least that's my conclusion. I have posted before about this confusion on the spacers; when you look into the posts carefully, the max width people talk about does correlate with which diameter OEM wheels (and therefore width of wheels) they have.

By the way, owning a W12 and confirming option lists and part numbers, there is no sport option. But, you have comfort air shocks with the sport level roll bars as the stock set up on the W12. I have since upgraded my roll bars to the S8 level; details are in a link in my auto signature. Ride is both plush yet firm now.