I managed to find a decent piece of a picture for you. Without jumping through hoops, 10" is the "practical" limit for a 986. With a 10", you will need a 47 or 48mm offset. You can go out to 40mm, but it depends on how wide your tires are. 265 is OK. 285/295 and you are sticking out and will rub unless you roll the fenders and go for some extreme camber to make up the hairs of clearance that you have. In other words a 10" ET40 will work, but it is not ideal. With a 10.5", you are moving every mm of that extra width into the offset and need ET40.

 

arenared:
Thanks for the great write-up!
Lots of useful info there.

 

The more I see the Techart Formula wheels the more I like them.
Definitely on my top 5 list now.

 

the techart formulas are kind of played out if you ask me, and look too plain.

 

They are and even though they are plain, I still think they look great on pretty much any Porsche.

 

How does 19x8 with 50 offset for the front and 19x9.5 with 44 offset for the rear sound?

 

Tire sizing excepted, the wheels should fit. You might be getting close to the strut body in the front. Worst case, you may need a 5mm spacer up front, but most likely not. 19" is a bit big on a 986 (IMHO), and I haven't looked at tire availability to make any recommendations or confirm fitment. The Techart Formulas are nice looking wheels. I was very interested in them at one point. The problem with them is that they are one of the heaviest wheels ever made for Boxsters. In 19", you are probably talking some serious weight. In comparison, your Boxster S II wheels are some of the lightest wheels ever made.

 

You know, I was thinking the same on 19s being too big, and at first were only considering 18s. But at the same time I think 19s would look great on it.

Regarding the heavy wheel, definitely a downside and in my other cars you can feel the difference when driving between winter tire swaps and summer setup swap. I appreciate the remainder as i completely forgot to check the wieght on them.

I also found a set of Rays 2 piece forged wheels that look nice and weigh in around 28 lbs each.

 

Hmmm... 28lbs is still kinda porky. I think that's about what the Turbo Looks weigh. Lighter wheels are low 20s. Some factory 17" and very-light 18" are around 20lbs. I think the Rays/Volk TE37s are like 18lbs (rears--fronts a couple lighter). I wouldn't worry about a couple of pounds since that's the difference among tire brands and new tires versus bald tires, but 10lbs is definitely noticeable IMHO. Thinking about it another way, 40lbs of rotational weight is about 6 or so HP not to mention the unsprung aspects.

 

If I do go with Techart, it'll definitely be the Daytona wheels.

 

My opinion would be Cargraphic wheels, my friend has a set of Black Cargraphic wheels on his Cayman S and I think it looks nice!

 

I'll have to check those out also.

 

I didn't try to max out the width, mostly because it wouldn't have helped handling much and would limit my alignment options.

Here's my '03 S with BBS RS-GT's with Diamond Black centers, 18 x 9.5 and 18 x 8 with stock size Michelin Pilot Sport Ribs.

 

Can't go wrong with BBS on Porsches, look nice.