Regular E30 wheels on ix?

There is lots of talk on the Internet about putting ix 15" wheels on a "regular" E30, but what about "regular" E30 14" bottlecaps on an ix?

Parents may buy an ix with bent wheels, and I have a set of bottle caps I'm not using...

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1989 - E30 - M20 - Manual. Approximately 270,000 miles
2000 - E46 - M52TUB28 - Manual. Approximately 110,000 miles

Those wheels have different offsets, iX wheels on a non iX will make the wheels to be to much inward, might rub at the front.

Quote
Earendil
There is lots of talk on the Internet about putting ix 15" wheels on a "regular" E30, but what about "regular" E30 14" bottlecaps on an ix?

Parents may buy an ix with bent wheels, and I have a set of bottle caps I'm not using...

iX wheels would cause clearance problems with the struts and shocks but the regular wheels wouldn't have this problem on the iX. The 14" might not have enough clearance for the calipers but may be ok. You'll have to check the brake part numbers for the iX vs the regular ones. If they are the same, it may be a non issue.

The only other thing that you need to be aware of is that the regular wheels will protrude a bit and if you put too large a tire on them, they may rub on the fender skirts.
Also, the iX sits a little higher than the regular E30 and putting 14" wheels on it may look a little funny unless you lower the car an inch or three.

So, whatever setup you go with, will just have to be tried out for fit.

Thanks for the info guys. The full story is that the ix for sale has two sets of wheels
15" basketweaves, good wheels, bald all season tires.
14" gold basketweaves, two bent wheels, almost brand new studded winter tires.

It being winter and all, it seems a shame to waist the studded tires. However there would be a need for freeway driving, so shaky bent wheels are no good. If it were just putzing around down, I'd say live with the bent wheels for a bit and suit up the 15" come spring. So the only reason to use the bottle caps of mine would be to make use of the 14" studded tires while doing faster speeds...and to lose the gold wheels

Perhaps I'll throw the bottle caps out there as a "Maybe", and if they decide to buy it we can test putting them on and make sure the calipers fit.

As an aside, I've never seen 14" gold basketweaves that had no center cap. They have the small half dollar sized cover for the axle nut that the bottle caps do, with exposed bolts, just like the bottle caps. BUt they are certainly weaves!

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1989 - E30 - M20 - Manual. Approximately 270,000 miles
2000 - E46 - M52TUB28 - Manual. Approximately 110,000 miles

Bottle caps went on fine, but I didn't drive with them. The 14" studded ones he had looked like an identical internal set of dimensions, and I did drive around on those. Nothing seemed fishy or off!

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1989 - E30 - M20 - Manual. Approximately 270,000 miles
2000 - E46 - M52TUB28 - Manual. Approximately 110,000 miles

Sorry, late to the discussion again!

Those 14" bottlecaps probably have an offset of 28mm. The OEM 15" iX basketweaves have an offset of 41mm, so the bottlecaps will stick out about 13mm (1/2") too far. Not such a big deal, and lots of people use those bottlecaps as winter beater wheels on iXes.

Having said that, if you went much lower on the offset, you'd notice it in the handling (and not in a good way). For some reason that escapes me, there's a current fashion for wheels that are "flush" with the side of the car, or even wheels that stick out, and so you see people sticking things like 0mm offset wheels on otherwise decent cars, with the end result of making their cars handle like crap.

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Dave
'91 325iX