I am probably moving up from 15s on the Daewoo of Death to 17s. I really don't want to from an aesthetics standpoint, but I'm also running out of high performance street tires in 15 inch sizes. 225/40/17 is a lot easier to find than 225/45/15. The gearing will probably be a little better with the 17s as well.
So, while I know I'm going to be dealing with more rotational inertia and unsprung mass, I'd like to use it to my advantage as much as possible.
Would a 17 inch wheel, provided it was in the middle of a low pressure zone, flow considerably more cooling air than a 15? My next set of fenders are going to have a big lip at the leading edge and I'm optimizing the underhood area to dump as much air as possible out through the wheel wells rather than under the car. Is this something that seems likely to work?
