Cool thanks for the reply! Love the look of factory wheels and others as well. Just can decide.

 

Retaining the factory wheels is money spent on other stuff.

 

It depends a lot on the tire and the tire pressure. KM2s on 18" wheels ( less sidewall to flex) have full contact at least up to 35 psi.

You are probably going to a lot worse things to your tire than run them on a rim that is 1/2" too narrow.

 

hah exactly, they look great as well.

I am curious if running a 12.5 wide tire on the stock wheels would be more likely to pull a bead? I would think it would actually hold the bead better as opposed to a wider wheel?

Has anyone had any issues with heavy offroad use and spacers?..I mean that would suck if your rear wheel passes you up going 75 on the highway.

 

Spacers are used all over the place and the consensus is they work just fine. I'm running spidertrax 1.5 and no issues. I check the spacer nuts with each tire rotation and I've never even had a nut loosen up. There's also a pic around here somewhere that someone rolled their jeep, the wheel cracked off, but the spacer is still on there! Search around you'll find some threads on spacers...

It's generally said that narrower wheels hold the bead better than a wider wheel. I think it's becuase you usually pop a bead when the wheel rolls to over and outside the tire contact patch, not becuase the tire get's too squished. Narrower wheel means a couple more inchs of play.

The only negative to a wide tire on a narrow wheel is that you have to drop the psi down to get a good contact patch.