Originally Posted by BlkStang-05

I'm putting on 9" black bullitt's and four 275/40/17ZR Falken FK-451

Originally Posted by OldFart

Dave,

Let's see if I can confuse you even more.

First, appearance. Since how your car looks is a very personal choice and statement about yourself, I'm not even going to address appearance.

Handling. Very complex. The fanatics among us try to obtain near perfect, neutral handling balance. No understeer (push), no oversteer (pull). In other words, in a hard turn with constant throttle, when the car does begin to lose traction, it does so in an equal amount front and back. In actual practice it is possible to control the car with the throttle.

The 05 Mustang is reported to be around 55/45 weight distribution front to rear. If you think about it (if true) this is pretty good, what with a large heavy chunk of aluminum (engine) up front and just the differential in the back to off-set all that weight up front.

Adding to the complexity (which I don't yet fully understand) is the weight shift acting on the car when you accelerate, brake, or turn a corner. Adding another level to this equation is the consideration of getting the power to the ground in all driving situations - rear traction. Massive amounts of horsepower are impressive but fairly useless unless you can make the car move, instead of producing great quantities of white smoke.

Of further interst to the daily driver, is the contact patch in wet driving conditions. The larger the contact patch vs the weight affects how easily the car will hydoplane. (More weight on a smaller contact patch is less likely to hydroplane than less weight on a large contact patch.) And of course tread design has a lot to do with this also. Now lets add another factor for the daily driver, the inertia of getting the wheel/tire to turn over. You can take this to an extreme and get a rear wheel/tire so large that it results in excessive clutch wear on a car not designed to handle it.

OK, now that I've given you something to think about. I first recommend you do some web surfing and your own research before making a decision on wheels and tires. (On the other hand, the car is a V6 daily driver and I may have bored you to tears with all this information.)

Other than that, I can say that from my own experience, the GT handles well with one tire size larger on the rear than the front, producing very manageable and neutral handling. The downside of this is that you cannot rotate the tires. So for a V6 daily driver, I would have to go with the same size wheels/tires all around for this reason alone. For a V6 daily driver, I would go with 18x8 wheels and 245's. I think you will be pleased with both the looks and handling of this combination on a V6. (a 245 is a bit skinny for a 18x9 wheel and if you are committed to the 18x9 wheels I recommend yhou go with a 255.)

Good luck,
OldFart