What’s more uncommon than one car sporting a clean set of authentic bronze TE37s? Two cars. What’s more rare than two cars with bronze TE37s? Both of the cars are Priuses with adjustable air suspension. And what’s more rare than that? This perfect fitment — check it out!
The intended tires for the projects were these Accelera Phis. Priced in the sub-$100 ball park per tire, the Phis are affordable, and they seem to stretch well. Joey arrived first with his black Prius. And while his fitment was already quite aggressive, he ran into some slight rubbing issues with his current tire setup. Tonight’s goal was to switch from his 215-width tires to 205s, and hope that the choice would give better fender clearance.
After swapping to the 205s with a stretch, Joey was able to lower his car with practically no rubbing. Check out how the fender meets the lip in the rear.
Next up was Henry’s red Prius. Here’s one of his wheels with the old tire.
Originally, the plan was to mount a pair of Accelera tires on the back Henrys car. But, it turns out that the 215 Accelera Phis were wider than the 215 Nankang NS25s that were on previously. 215-width between brands are almost never equal, even though they’ve got the same width rating. This is why I like to draw more precise diagrams of the wheel and tire assembly in software using the section-width, tread-width, and overall diameter.
Instead of putting the new Acceleras on Henry’s car, he ended up taking the used Hankook V12s from Joey’s car. Luckily, that did that trick for fitment. As you might imagine, the Cheetah Bead Blaster was needed in order to get the tire to bead itself onto the wheel. (No fire magic needed here).
There we go. Now that’s perfect fitment. With this, there’s probably about a card-clearance between the rear tire and the rear fender at full drop. In fact, the fender can rub on the lip of the wheel. Some people ask why anyone would want to do this on a Prius. But then again, what else would you do on a Prius? Go off-roading? (ha ha 😉 )
One thought on “Aggressive Gas Savers – Henry’s & Joey’s Priuses”