We own a 1987 740 Turbo with chrome alloy wheels. Our 850 has regular wheels. It occurred to me that they might be interchangable. I am now running the 850 on the 740's wheels. The hubs fit perfectly, the 5 lug holes align (seemingly)perfectly. The clearances seem to be OK. The wheel stance is about 1 inch wider.

Question! Is there any reason (beyond immanent death) why I should go back to running on the old standard wheels? Really appreciate a knowledgable answer.

Thanks in advance.

Bad idea. The two cars have very different offsets, which is the distance between the center of the rim and the hub mounting surface. Using the wrong offset messes up the geometry such that your steering and suspension systems are now wrong.

Bad idea!

John

Changing the offset on any given car will upset the handling balance, it's not recommended unless you really know what your doing.
Probably the worst thing you can do though is to increase the track with the wrong offset on a FWD, and decrease the track on a RWD car, so in other words, don't use FWD wheels on a RWD car without spacers, and don't use RWD wheels on a FWD car full stop.

On many cars, it can make the handling dangerous, and by the time you discover this you have already had a accident.
One of the biggest problem with the RWD wheels on a FWD is massive torque steer.
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My 85 760Ti, and her name is Veronica...

I am not familiar with the dimensions of either wheel, but bolt pattern fit is only one consideration when selecting a wheel.

One of the other posts mentions that the offset is different between these two wheels.

If the 740 wheel has a larger offset, then using them increases loading on your wheel bearings and your wheel bearings WILL fail sooner than with stock offset wheels. Now, stock wheel bearings with a stock offset may not normally fail 'till 300,00 miles, and this new offset may cause an early failure at, say, 200,000 miles. So this may not be a particularly worrysome problem. But it is also possible that the change in offset will cause the normal 300,000 bearing life to decline to 50,000 miles, which is a more real concern.

So you are saying that the 740 rims are on the 850? Are the 740 chrome rims "Volvo" rims? What size are they? So pretty much, I can put my 740 turbo rims on my 960 which has the same hubs as the 850/70.
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'90 740 Turbo with lots of upgrade (lady ran a red light and totalled it), 96 960 bone stock (to try to fill the gap that the 740 left me) 83' 242GLT, '78 245DL

The FWD and RWD wheels do have different offset.

Hi, i had some 850 rims with snows that i put on my 740 wagon.
I think it did rub on the wheel wells and b/c it was only the rear, it affected handling. when i put them on i did not notice they had dif offset.
Don