A few people have asked me how I put the GTA rims on my Malibu. Its not too hard and there are a few ways to do it, some ways are much better than others. The following explains what I think is the best way to do it.
Required parts
4 Front rims
2 wheel spacers (These come stock on the front of F-body cars)
20 GTA/IROC style lug nuts
10 GTA/IROC style front lug studs
Miscelaneous tools to remove stock studs from rotors and axles
Parts substitution
If you cannot get the stock front spacers from an F-Body, MR. Gasket makes spacers in various thicknesses. You can get these from Summit, etc. I ended up using a 7/16" spacer. Summit P/N MRG-2372 $12.95
If you cannot find 4 front rims then you CAN use 2 rears as substitutes in the back only! However, you will need to get two more spacers for the rear as well as the front. You will also need longer lug studs for the back now too!
You CAN run the stock studs, however I really, really wouldnt do this, for two reasons:
1. Since you are using spacers, you lose a bit of usable threads on the stud, this isnt cool during hard cornering!
2. If your G-Body is pre-'82(Im pretty sure this is the cutoff year) then you have SAE studs. The correct GTA/IROC lug nuts are metric and arent available in SAE thread. At least I couldnt find any! This forces you to use acorn style lug nuts which dont really seat in the rim very well.
I got my GTA rims brand new from Classic Industries for $150 each. This is a steal compared to what most re-furb people want!
Locating lug studs
Unfortunately I dont know the P/N of the studs I used, but this is how I found what I needed. I took the stock stud to Napa auto parts and looked through their catalog. I knew I needed a lug stud that was roughly as long as a stock f-body stud, had metric threads (Forgot the size, when you buy the lug nuts, you'll figure that one out) and had a similar knurled area. A stock F-body does not have the right knurl size. I finally located some studs that had a slightly larger knurled area, but that was OK, they just went in a little harder thats all.
Mounting the rims
If you have 4 fronts, just use the stock F-Body spacer(or equivalent) up front and no spacer out back.
If you have 2 fronts and 2 rears, you must put fronts on front and rears on rear with spacers all around.
Center caps
I originally got a set of GTA rims off of a GTA, so I do have center caps with a firebird logo. I am still looking for new ones with a bowtie preferably. This place sells center caps at a decent price, but im not crazy about the style. I do know that the center caps from 15" Camaro dished 5 spoke wheels will fit as I have a set of these as well and I was able to test fit the center cap just fine.
Update - Front spacers
Just for grins I took the front spacers off and the rims still fit! I am not sure why, it must be because of the XH steering box mod.
Update - 12" Brake swap
Now that i've done the 12" brake swap which pushes the front wheels out about 3/8" I need to switch to rears on the front!
More to come...(Maybe)
If anyone has anything to add please let me know...
Last update: 1/15/2004