98 Cobra Rims

@Mustang5L5 Thanks for checking on the weight and the specs. I think I'm remembering the weight from one of my old 15" drag rears. These clones look very close to original '98s in all respects. I'm gong to go ahead and order a pair of the 17x9s and see what they look like. Hopefully their decent quality and balance well. I like the idea of using the factory 17x8s up front and the 17x9s out back. If they past muster, I'll order more for a track set.

@revhead347 I'm really sorry to hear about your wheel damage. That's horrible, and really hits hard when you can't find exact replacements anymore. Stories like that seem to happen more and more, especially now that you can't find most of the taken-for-granted parts from "back in the day" anymore. How are you fitting the 10.5" wheels in back? Did you roll your fenders or was your custom axle build narrowed from stock width?

revhead347 said:

The retail on the wheels on the Eagle Alloys was over $1100 for the set in like 1998. Put 25 years of inflation on that number. I bought them used at $550 in like 2004 or something. I think I just paid just over $600 for these new Chinesium wheels.

I figured out the problem. I just spent over $8500 on the transmission swap. When I did the transmission I finally found a way to stop the rear main seal leak. I had a squeaky belt tensioner and fixed that. The AC compressor had a small leak where I had to top off the gas like every 5 years, and I changed the compressor. It was literally the moment when there was nothing left to fix on the car, and it wasn't leaking a single thing for the first time in over 20 years.

Kurt

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Of course that’s the way it goes! That’s pretty much my life as well….. always something.
But on a positive, how did you fix the rear main?

Can you not get the cracks welded up and have the wheel refinished? We have a couple places here in Oklahoma that do that.

I picked up the LMR 1998 Cobra 17x9s a couple of months ago. I'm very happy with the purchase so far, especially since I've wanted 9"ers for the rear for a long time. Here are my impressions:

• The shipping / packaging was great. They were better protected than the original FR '98s I ordered from Summit back in 2005. The pair arrived in a giant box that looked like hell (thanks UPS!), but the wheels were all individually boxed inside with no box dents or wheel damage.
• These reproductions look really good! From what I can tell, the build quality and finish are on par with the originals. I can't comment on the fit since I haven't installed them or had them balanced yet (too busy with work and family stuff).
• Proportion-wise, they look like a very good match to the originals, even with the expanded width.
• I'm not much of a paint guy, but the color looks like it's a tad off. It appears to be slightly darker, flatter with more luster and larger metal flake, and a less glossy or thinner clear coat - I hope that makes sense. In all fairness, they do say something about that in the video where they suggest buying a full set for a perfect color match front to rear. I really need to pull one of my original '98s out into the sunlight next to these for a better comparison.

If the color mismatch is really noticeable, I'll probably go to a wheel restoration place (plenty of those around MI due to our potholes) and see if they can re-do the finish to match the originals. I'm not sure where the majority of the cost comes from in re-finishing wheels, if it's from fixing curb rash and dents or the re-painting/coating part, so hopefully it won't be too crazy expensive to just change the color and do more clear coat. If the color is close, I could see if they can add another layer of clear-coat to help match the originals, but I'm not sure if that's even possible with an already coated / painted wheel.

I also have to decide on new tires. I'm not sure how wide I can go with these wheels since they changed the backspacing to fix the rear wheel sucked-in stagger look on the SN95. I would like to go 285s in back to keep the same diameter as the factory width 255s up front, but there aren't many 285/17 options out there in summer performance tires. If it ends up being a 275/245 combo to keep matching diameters, the only benefit could be less tram-liming on the street with the thinner front tires.

I hope this helps anyone else who has been considering these wheels. This seems like a better option and more cost effective than widening a set of original '98s and using wheel spacers, even if some color matching is necessary. Please let me know if you have an thoughts or feedback.