I decided, between bus routes, that I would bring the Monte Carlo out front and measure up the backspacing I’ll need for my wheels.
Basically I sat the tire where I wanted it in relation to the fender flare, sat that straight edge across the tire, and saw where my (thankfully magnetic) level sat. The tricky bit was that the tire is built for an 8" wide wheel, but because of its construction there’s only 5.5 inches between the inner and outer sidewall. I decided the best thing then was to to add 1.25 inches to the inside sidewall, which should get me roughly the right measurement once the wheel is mounted.
The wheels I’m looking at, Bassett 8 hole circle track steelies, are available in a 2 or 3 inch backspace. My measurement puts me at a 2.5" backspace as being ideal, so I’m going to go with the 3" backspace and pull the tire inside the flare a little rather than push it outside the flare with 2".
This is where the stock tire sits in relation to the flare now:
Quite a bit inside it! And here’s where we’re aiming for:
That’s more like it. It’ll be a little bit inside that, I think, but that’s fine. I could always throw a spacer in there if I wanted to, but I don’t want to.
You don’t need a wheel on there to see that this is going to look AWESOME. I’m going to order some wheels you guys.