E21 316: Tyre stretch comparison.

This is for a mate who's bought some 17" BBS reps (Calibre Vintage) for his Mk4 Golf. As with my tyres, the Demon Tweeks guys recommended 45 profile for his wheel size. Im guessing this is for comfort, safety etc., but not with the amount of stretch in mind. The first pic shows my 16x9J wheel with a Yokohama 205/45 tyre. In my opinion this is just too big looks wise and takes over the look of the wheel. The second pic shows my second set of tyres, Toyo 195/40 profile. The difference it makes to looks is staggering, showing the rim off instead of hiding it. In my case the bigger tyre was jammed against my wheel-arch and made me cut more than I needed to when I got the lower profile 40s. 

Lower profiles are harder to find and the tyre sellers will probably say the 5% difference in tyre-wall won't make much difference in order to shift items they have in stock, but as you can see below the difference is actually huge. 

225/45

215/40

May as well be 225, profile same but 5mm less pitch-angle on either side.

E21 316: The wrong tyres! Sold.

Wallace and Gromit are back, this time they've got the right trousers on, it's the tyres that are right out. They're just too hi-profile and are wreaking havoc amongst the villages wheel-arches. Yep, those wicked Yokohama Advan have had to come off again and go on to eBay, as the wheel-arch chewed 2 of them pretty badly and they can't be returned, but the damage is only in the tread so I figured someone would want them cheap. Bearing in mind they've only covered about 0.2 of a mile and are worth ~£500 new, I figured £300 would still be a good deal and it looks like I was right - I had a buyer on the first day of the auction and got damn close to my asking price. The latest set of tyres have ony cost me £280 anyway, so I've had more expensive screw-ups it must be said.

The new tyres I've bought are good-old Toyo Proxes T1R, a bit boring and predictable, but again it's tough to get matching tyres in the right sizes. I am sad to see the lovely semi-slick design of the Yokos go though, but they just don't make a 40 profile and Toyo do, the new ones are 195/40/16 for the 8J front and 215/40/16 for the 9J rear - it's going to be quite a stretch! Watch this space.

These really were some of the coolest road tyres I have ever seen, what a shame they're like big balloons, hopefully the new owner will get the benefit of all that grip with the Scooby Impreza he's putting them on.

E21 316: 8Js won't fit the front...

After all the hacking and cutting on the rear arch to only discover I needed smaller tyres, today I threw an 8J onto the front with 20mm spacers, as without they just hit the track-rod end and wont even sit flush, and I find that space is even more limited at this end.

With the lip pulled out this time by hand, then neatened up a little with the baseball-bat / metal-bar rolling trick, the big 45-profile tyres still contact the back of the arch.

When steered hard-right, the tyre rubs past the edge of the bumper and fender, so it had to be jacked to turn the wheel straight again. The tyre also bent the edge of the front-valance, cracking the fibreglass repair I did last summer. A good inch would need to be cut off the valance here and I'm not sure lower profile tyres alone will remedy this, so some will need chopping off anyway, best keep it to a minimum. Oh, and I must save up for those camber-plates!

E21 316: Making the 9Js fit the rear...

Summary of the bank-holiday weekends activities:

Pulled the N/S/R wheel-arch back out and cut it off.
Peeled back the inner-skin of the arch and cut about 4 inches off it.
Cut a notch out of either side of where the arch meets the bumper shut-line.

The outer rim of the arch is now way off the tyre, but I could see a black rubber mark further up inside the inner wheel-arch.

The car was now rolling with a driver in, but one test drive revealed that any bump causes rubbing and the rim of the tyre caught the sharp edge of the cut inner arch, which chewed it pretty bad.

I've made a lot of space up there, so before I start hacking away any more arch, I'm going to buy smaller, lower profile tyres, I think that is now clear.

E21 316: Deep beige BBS?

I'm planning on painting the new wheels in the same Peugeot Panama Beige I did the rims of the Melbers in, maybe having them powder-coated in time, but here's a quick test on one of the 9J with my remaining rattle-cans.

E21 316: Serious new rubber - Yokohama Advan Neova AD08!

I've been having a bit of trouble finding a suitable set of tyres to fit my staggered fat wheels. I want a nice stretch to them of course, but nothing too crazy so I decided on 205/45/16 for the 8" wide fronts and 225/45/16 for the 9" at the back. Trouble is there doesn't seem to be one manufacturer making the same model tyre in both these sizes. I had my heart set on Toyo T1, but could only get a 195-wide front tyre to match my 225 rear. Falken will do a 205 front, but only a 215 for the rear in the same style. It is legal to run different tyre types, but unis on the the back and omnis on the front wouldn't make for the prettiest stance, so I've been stuck with naked BBS reps and unable to sell on my 15" Melbers.

I finally got a purchase order through work and was able to access the STS tyre-database and found a couple of budget makes in the right sizes surprisingly, but these aren't what I want to be stretching on so I guess you have to pay a little more to get what you want. I found some Yokohama semi-slick 'track-day' tyres that come in just about any size, but they ain't cheap - here they are on Demon Tweeks, where they'll set you back just under £500 for 2 of each width. Of course, I got my discount through work and they ended up running me pennies over £300, quite a saving, though it's still a bit more than I was planning to spend. Still, the tyre problem is sorted and they're on their way.

Yokohama Advan Neova AD08, to give them their full title, are a bit of a JDM-heads wet dream, but make a pretty cool looking tyre and have a lot of rubber on the road. Not that I'll benefit from all that grip in the E21, but they are designed for the track so they're made of good stuff and should stretch on nicely!