BMW bolt pattern?

I came across this video: http://youtu.be/9-HEPnHQu2Q

The red Corvair has BMW wheels on it. Are they the same bolt pattern as GM? Or was this a modification?

5X4.75 aka 5X120.65 GM is really, really close to 5X120 BMW

Yep, as long as the hub bore is good, they're pretty much interchangeable. FWIW, I've had 15" vette rally's on the back of my e36 before.

Depending on how many torque cycles they've been through, it is a crap shoot.

First of all, if the wheel is not hub-centric and uses conical lugs, it will center on the stud with the most clamping force. Aside from that, the lug studs have a pretty intense job. Even if they are all clamped equally, their job is to pull straight against the hub, not flex nearly half a millimeter.

In a daily driver or cruiser, I'd do it in a heartbeat. Anything other than driving back and forth to the show, driver beware. Its one of those things that might not even cause an imbalance at 170 mph, or it could snap a lug at 25 mph. Just fair warning.

In reply to curtis73:

I wish I could vote that up 100 times.

Do not put Chevy wheels on your BMW race car or vice versa. that millimeter will be the reason the wheel fell off.

In reply to Giant Purple Snorklewacker:

I plan on trying these this year on my 325i.

The lug seats are off less than half a mm. I might try correcting the lug seats using the spare hub as a guide.

Wobble bolts?

(I'd never run them on my own vehicle.)

Giant Purple Snorklewacker wrote: In reply to curtis73: I wish I could vote that up 100 times. Do not put Chevy wheels on your BMW race car or vice versa. that millimeter will be the reason the wheel fell off.

In reply to Chris_V:

That is an autocross car. No one gets hurt if all the wheels fall off.

When you find yourself turning at triple digit speeds and want to run different pattern wheels - you fix it at the hubs.

Matthew Huizing wrote: In reply to Giant Purple Snorklewacker: I plan on trying these this year on my 325i. The lug seats are off less than half a mm. I might try correcting the lug seats using the spare hub as a guide.

Why not take the hubs to a machine shop and have them re-drilled (or plated/filled) and re-drilled? I'm not sure what you plan to do with the car - if you are driving around town or auto-x'ing you can probably get away with it by checking them often - but that is what you are doing. Getting away with it.

If you side-load the lug studs and then heat cycle and stress them on a race track at speed they will eventually fail. Even those really expensive bull nose hardened ones fail running the correct wheels sometimes.

So... be careful. Check them very often.

In reply to SyntheticBlinkerFluid:

Also, I love the exhaust on the red one.

I ran the spare from a Camaro on my 318ti

Giant Purple Snorklewacker wrote: Why not take the hubs to a machine shop and have them re-drilled (or plated/filled) and re-drilled? I'm not sure what you plan to do with the car - if you are driving around town or auto-x'ing you can probably get away with it by checking them often - but that is what you are doing. Getting away with it.

The one machine shop I found willing to enlarge the hub bores didn't think the lug seats needed to be changed. My plan is to use these mainly for autocrossing with the BMWCCA and maybe STX with other clubs. I change wheels pretty often.

I have had plenty of wheel/hub troubles recently with stock wheels. So far they have been caused by reusing cheap, old steel lug nuts and reusing old axle nuts. My former E30 Bottlecaps were also often involved. Using 80 ft-lbs is probably a bad idea on a four lug car.