07azhhr

Thank you Steve for the links.


Those are great looking wheels but the will not fit over Brembos. They are a lot like my Platinum Widows in my Sig pic where the spokes come back in too soon.

It is easy to spot the non fitting rims when they have that shape. It is very hard to look at a pic of the front and tell if a rim will work if the spokes are straight all the way to the rim though. This is because you can't see the hub area or the back of the spokes. My current rims are straight spokes to the outer edge of the rim yet they do not work. The hub area is only an inch and a half or so off the bottom of the spokes so they still hit the caliper. This is what makes this so difficult.

Tirerack seems to be the only ones that make this distinction between with and without the Brembos. Though their site is frustrating because they do not list anything but 18s and they do not let you see their available bolt patterns and offsets. You can find rims by brand. It will say what diameters they sell said rim in but after that you HAVE to put in your car to see if they have them in your car's size. To give an example, the Borbet Lv5 is in the list on the Cobalt site. Tirerack sells them by does not list them for the SS. I have to assume that they must not sell them in our bolt pattern or offset anymore though since I can't see what sizes they have.


So far going thru the thread on the Cobalt forum there are very few suggested wheels other than the list in the first post. Most of which are no longer sold or perhaps, like in the Lv5's case, not in our size anymore. A lot of that thread turned out to be can these fit or what steelies fit questions.

07azhhr

To help visualize what I said above, here are some examples of the insides of wheels.

This one is for a 17x8 wheel but the hub area is the point of the example. This is most likely too short to clear the calipers. You can see that the spokes are not that far away from the hub area.






Now look at this image. You can see that the spokes are much further out then they were on the 17s. These are 18x8. These have a better chance of fitting.





Both of those are the profiles for this rim





This is my current 18x8 Niches.







As you can see in the pics, from the front they look like they have the same profile in relation to the rim and the hub. But they don't on the back side. Mine are like the first image. What makes this even harder is that mine have a +35 offset vs the +40 offset of the second profile image. So even though a rim has more offset does not mean it will fit vs one with less.

Oldblue

Spacers not only are not a great idea, but there aren’t many hub centric 5x110 12mm spacers out there.

That is the offset dimension in your pics

firemangeorge

A little more perspective of where the rim touches the hub.

07azhhr

Thank you George.

I took it a step further to illustrate the issue.

The area to the right and left of the blue line is the issue. Ignore the offset differences here. The profile is a bigger issue.

2005HHRauto

Huh, I never thought about that, that the knuckes being different would have an effect on the caliper centering...

I guess that I lucked out, but it doesn't make cents...
Both LS/LT & of course the SS brackets fit a-ok with the SS knuckle.

Back then I based my research when comparing part numbers on the 2 different HHR brackets, & the 2 different brackets for my wifes 2004 Malibu.

On the 2004 Malibu you had a 16" wheel option over the standard 15" wheels...
The knuckle were the same, so the 2 different brackets would work with the same knuckle.
And the GM part#s for these brackets were the same as the 2 different HHR brackets.

The Malibu has a similar knuckle as the one on the HHR SS, & the wheel hubs are the same.
But the 2 knuckles are not the same part number because of the HHR chassis being different than the Malibu chassis...

So based on this, it was just plug-&-play for me...
I never realized that with the smaller hub size & knuckle on the HHR LS/LT, that using the bigger SS bracket would cause an issue...

So, did you just use the SS bracket/rotor?
Or did you also use the SS caliper?
Is the SS caliper physically bigger than the LS/LT caliper?
On the Malibu the calipers are the same with the 2 different brackets...
I know that the HHR calipers are different, & I though that they were different because of the slightly different piston sizes used, & just assumed the they were both physically the same size.

I had to grind my SS calipers for my 15" wheels to fit, but if the LS/LT calipers are physically smaller, I would've used them?

EDIT:
Ok, after thinking more about this, I don't think that you needed to center your calipers???
Because if the 2 different brackets use the same knuckle on the Malibu, & the Malibu bracket part#s are the same as for the 2 different HHR brackets , than the different knuckle sizes on the HHR wouldn't make a difference on caliper centering.
The knuckles are the only different because of the hub size, on the HHR, & wouldn't cause any issues with the different brackets/calipers alignment???

Oldblue

I did need to centre the calipers , the inside was very very close to rubbing, and as the pads wore the calipers rubbed the rotors