(Chris Lamb) wrote in message >...
> Would like to buy an aluminum wheel that will work on both my 97 Honda
> Civic hatchback and my 99 Saturn SC-1 3-door. For Honda is says +48mm
> offset and for Saturn it says 4-100. I have no idea what that means.
> Will same wheel work on both cars? Honda recommends 45-16 tire and
> Saturn recommendation is 50-16.

A few parameters to consider:
1. Bolt Pattern
4-100 (more often seen as 4x100) refers to the bolt pattern. There are
4 bolt on a 100mm (3.93inch) circle around the centre of the
wheel/axle. The Civic and the Saturn have the 4x100 bolt pattern.

2. Offset
This is the distance between the centre of the wheel (in width) and
the location of the wheel feature that will contact the hub on the
car. Usually, front wheel drive vehicule have "high" offset (say 40 to
50mm).

3. Centre Bore Diameter
This is the diameter of the wheel feature that contact the hub. Check
this site: http://www.speedstash.com/wheelguide.html. You can see that
the Civic has a 64.1mm centre bore diameter and the Saturn is 57.1mm.

4. Overall wheel diameter:
Use the following wheel calculator to see how you speedometer is going
to be off by and I suggest you keep the difference between what the
manufacturer say and your new wheel size to less the 2% but lots of
people go to 4%. http://www.miata.net/garage/tirecalc.html

Here's another link for you:
http://www.fastco.ca/Wheels%20Frames/Wheels_index.html
Oh yeah, http://www.tirerack.com/about/techcenter.html (see wheel
section)


There are other considerations:
- you have a lot of room to maneuvre in terms of offset is you go from
a 5.0inch wheel to a 6.0inch wheel but a lot less if you jump to a
7.0inch wide wheel. Search newsgroups for your car/wheel combo. The
primary risk with the offset and is to have contact of the wheel/tire
with the inside of the car and/or brake lines.
- changing the wheel can change the way the wheel loads the suspension
components and this may or may not impact your vehicule
braking/handling performance (positively or negatively) and the life
of the components such as wheel bearing (more probably than the
performance thing).

Good luck,

Frank
97 SL1
110,000 Mi