Are Porsche Lobster Claw wheels timeless beauties or ugly abominations that should be banished to the back of the garage?
Doesn’t matter how they look: They’re heavy and a bit too narrow up front.
Even though our Porsche 997 wore fresh Bridgestone Potenza Sport tires on those Lobster Claws, we knew we could do better.
Our ideal wheel-and-tire setup: one …
That fitment guide they have is handy(especially for someone that has no clue how to size tires) :-) It's a great starting point.
Not sure why you didn't go with the widest wheel possible for track use? I'm personally using the Apex wheels in 9" front, 12" rear on my 996tt, very happy with them and they fit perfectly without rubbing.
In reply to docwyte :
Trying real hard to keep this car truly streetable. The goal is to drive 500 miles comfortably to an event, do that event and then drive home. If I did drive, I would have to live with the track tires and wheels on the road. Took a 200 miles trip last week and they were fine for street use.
In reply to kaybat :
I thought it was pretty handy too.
I'm running the 9x18" and 10x18" SM-10 on my Cayman with 245/40/18 F and 275/40/18 R tires. One word of caution. The Apex wheels have less offset than the stock wheels. After I added the GT3 arms and 16mm of shims my wheels wound up with a bit of poke. Thankfully they don't rub.
In reply to Tim Suddard :
Ok, but I still don't see how the wider wheels impact that? Like I mentioned, they fit my car perfectly fine, with no rubbing at all.
In reply to docwyte :
If they went with the 12 inch rear, they would just maintain the rear-biased grip they were trying to correct, and the 9 inch fronts require 2 degrees of negative camber to not rub which is going to eat tires. Their pick seems like a good compromise between practical and performance.
docwyte said:In reply to Tim Suddard :
Ok, but I still don't see how the wider wheels impact that? Like I mentioned, they fit my car perfectly fine, with no rubbing at all.
Wider wheels means more tramlining, which could be a pain on the street, and possibly a slimmer selection of street-friendly tires.
(Wouldn't stop me though, I like wide tires and I cannot lie 
)
I run the same width tires on 8, 8.5 and 9" wheels, same with the 11's and 12's. Will a 245 tramline more on a 9" wheel vs a 8.5"? Kinda doubt it. Will a 9" wheel need 2 degrees of negative camber to fit? Maybe, I run way more than that and can't say I see any aggressive tire wear on my car. That being said, it's not a daily driver, so isn't seeing 10-15k miles a year. My front tires do have close to 10k total miles on them tho and they're not all chewed up by camber wear.
New wheels are better looking than the lobster claws.
Apex is a fabulous vendor! I guess I need to get a Porsche so I can continue to support them :)
350z247 said:In reply to docwyte :
If they went with the 12 inch rear, they would just maintain the rear-biased grip they were trying to correct, and the 9 inch fronts require 2 degrees of negative camber to not rub which is going to eat tires. Their pick seems like a good compromise between practical and performance.
Toe eats tires far more than camber.
I loved Lobster Claws, but I think that the designe has aged out.
I've had a couple of sets of these 911 wheels on my Caymans. I forget what they are called, but I think that they are 996 wheels and they're not too hard to find. Sure, they're a little boring, but I like five spoke wheels and they're easy to clean.
I'm pretty sure that they were made for Porsche by Ronal.
In reply to Tim Suddard :
I did a 300 mile round trip in my Bridgestone RE 71rs on my 2018 BMW F80 M3 to MPACT East a PoconoRaceway and back home. I was going to swap out my street tires ( Michelin PS) but ran over a steel plate in roadworks coming from work. I can attest they are a great street tire, and very responsive on track.
Funny. I have the sm10s on my b5s4 and I've been looking at running lobster claws next.
This is a 997.1
There's a lengthy thread on rennlist about the oil starvation problems of the m96/m97 engines.
The short version is: oil starvation problems are pretty severe in stock form, and are made just a little bit better with a good 60w oil, a large oil cooler and a deep, baffled sump.
A rennlister made a $3500 sump with 2 pickups built into it, and a sliding valve to select the left or right pickup. He calls it UIDS. There's a little data showing it working pretty good, but more data is more better...
Do you have a way to datalog oil pressures in your project car? It would be of great interest to every Pcar enthusiast out there... It seems awfully brave to throw 200tw tires on a car with one of those engines and track it, when motors are $12k on Ebay and a nice sleeved rebuild is ~$20k.
A ruined motor in one of these cars kinda of destroys the notion of it being a good value.. And it's not gonna last long with a fast driver behind the wheel on sticky tires...
This could be a good opportunity to do a Picar project or a Onegauge etc...
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