18x9 on a pu

[Manny]

A buddy of mine is looking to get some wheels in 18x9...I figured anything lower than +40 offset will be tough to fit. He will probably run the wheels on stock suspension for now, and eventually get coils. I'm thinking he's going to want at least a 235/40 tire on the wheels. Anybody with pu's running something similar on stock suspension or at least some sort of springs and/or shocks (no coilovers)

@MS3Bullet

[dbrier]

18X9 is very doable.
A rear fender roll will probably be in order if you want to run decent tires.

I'm running 18X8.5 +50 wheels with 245/40/18 tires with no issues on stock suspension with rolled rear fenders.
My suggestion would be an offset in the high 40s and 245 tires. A 40 series for stock suspension and maybe a 35 series if you're lowered.

I also run some 17x9 +42 wheels with 265/40/17 tires and they are too wide. They hit the plastic liner in the back with lots of weight in the car and are 1mm away from the strut in the front. I'll be replacing them with 255/40/17 race tires soon.

Here are the 18s.

[Manny]

but will it rub stock front shocks is my question. Im looking for first hand experience with x9 not x8.5

[dbrier]

You have a ton a variables.
offset
tire size
tire brand
coilovers

Coilovers often give you less clearance than the stock suspension. If you know what clears, you can use math to figure out if your proposed setup is closer or further from the strut.
If you increase the wheel width by .5 in, you add and extra .25 inch on the inside and .25 in. on the outside if the offset isn't changed. That's about 6mm. That means that an 18X8.5 +50 wheels and an 18X9.0 +44 will put the inner lip of the wheel in the exact same place relative to the strut. The issue is now you've moved all the extra width closer to the fender, so now the wheels stick out 12mm further.

Tires are similar, every time you go 10mm wider, you put 5mm on the inside and 5mm on the outside. The tricky part is that there can be as much as 15+mm difference in real world tire width with the same numbers printed on the outside. Tires like Star Spec, RE-11, etc. run very wide, all seasons are more normal and your cheaper touring tires might even run narrow.