wow lots of threads on wheels. Spent a lot of time reading but still a couple questions. I'm looking at AR wheels & they say the best combo for my car for 18's is Front: 18x8.5 35mm offset, rec tires are 245 40 18. Rear: 18x10 41mm offset, rec tires are 275 35 18. The other option is front 18x9.5 2" lip 46mm offset. rear 18x10 3" lip 33 mm offset. So is the "lip" the part that would stick out past the wheelwell?
On the first combo it looks like with the rec tires the front would be overall height of 25.7" (same as my 245 50 16 stocks) while the rear would be an overall height of 25.6". If anything I'd want the rears taller, not the front even though 6mm is probably not going to make a visual difference. I'm not 100% on 18's either. I like a lot of the combos people have done with 17's on here. I also would like to lower around 1 1/2 " in the future so wondering if 17's would be better for that. It seems the offset is a little low too according to some reads on here?
Thanks for any input.

If you're planning on lower your car I wouldn't go with the 18s or you might run into clearance issues after you lower it. Most people I know are very happy with 17s on their lowered cars.

Any clearance issues would be offset dependant. The lower the offset number the more the wheel sticks out and might have clearance issues. Stock 17x9 WS6 wheels have a 50mm offset
General rule is to stick with offsets between 35mm to 56mm but keep in mind wheel width will have an effect on what offset you can use aswell.

My setup is very similar to what your first set is
Mine are 18x8.5 front w/245/40/18's and 18x9.5 rear w/275/35/18's all on a 35mm offset. The difference in tire height between the two is not enough to notice and still close enough to stock not to necessitate a speedo recalibration.
Heres a couple pics




Notice how the wheels are just inside the wheel wells front and rear.
Keep in mind this is Stock ride height and with an Adj Panhard bar to center the axle.
I will be doing Strano Springs Swaybars and Koni S/A Shocks in the upcoming weeks and will post pics to show the difference.

ok thanks, that helps out a lot. Your setup looks a little better too. Only 1mm diff than stock for front overall height & 3mm for rear. So the last question I have then is if you can go up to 56mm offset then I assume there is still a lot of room under there before you have to worry about hitting any susp parts or anything? 21mm is a lot of room. I have a crapload of room but not sure what my stock offset is. My stock are 245/50/16 with the z rated tires.

FYI the Stock 16X8" wheels have a 56mm offset

I actally have quite a bit of room in the rear because of the 35mm offset but I would of preferred to have 40-45mm offset all the way around instead then I could of run the same size on all four corners. Problem was the wheels I wanted weren't available in the larger offsets so I had to settle. But I am not unhappy with my descision cause I was looking for something different then the cookie cutter wheels that everyone else has.

kewl, thanks. That gives me a crapload more room to work with than I thought. I going to recalc all this now to see how crazy I can get