Ok so my old tires are getting a little worn ( look more like drag slicks than road tires) I wanted to know if wheel weight would really hurt my cars acceleration that much? I've seen some tires for 16lbs and some over 22lbs, would I actually notice a difference??? oh yea is it posable to fit 18' wheels on a first gen neon without any mods?

 

I'm fairly certain you can fit 18's if you get the right wheels and offset. Bigger wheels will slow you down just a tad. I'm going to get a nice set of 17's for the summer whenever I buy wheels and run the stockers on in the winter.

 

Yes, larger wheels will slow you down, and more than just a little. Wheels are the one piece of the car you want as light as possible. ( Speaking from racing point of view) The less unsprung weight the better, because the more rotation weight you add, the harder the engine has to work to move them. I have three sets of wheels. My lightest are the gram lights that are just over 12.5 pounds each. For a comparision a few years ago I switched between the stock R/T wheels with Yokohama Avid H4 and 17X7 Tenzo R passion 5 with Yokohama Parada on. In a drag race the average difference was seven tenths of a second, and in drag racing thats huge!

Now I race the road course and Auto-X. The larger wheels let you corner faster, but your much slower in the straights. Depending on the track, some can see a few seconds difference with the same car, same tires, just different sized wheels.