Winter tyres puchased - Summer ones to follow.

[rafletcher]

Well I finally got round to trial fitting the "winter" rims on the Le Mans - some 7.5J x 17 ET43 Audi alloys - that Audi customer support said wouldn't fit because they had the wrong offset!!

Bearing in mind the standard rim is I think an 8.5J x 19 ET52 the rims are 1" narrower (so increasing inner clearance by 1/2" or 12mm say) with an offset 9mm less (moving the centreline of the rim "outwards")- adding to the clearance for a total of 21mm extra clearance inside and an outer edge only 3mm different from stock.

Anyway the rims went on fine (tyre-less), cleared the brakes, no scraping from the insides amywhere . I've bitten the bullet and ordered 4 off Nokian WR A3 winter tyres in 225/50 17 98V XL (H2 is the marking on the rim - so the tyres exceed the rim spec - and I didn't even know rims were speed rated!). £543 fitted from Mytyres.co.uk. I would have used Event Tyres (they provide mobile fitting) but they didn't offer that tyre, and the Mytyres fitting centre is only 3 minutes away - and as the rims are off the car at present it's no pain to drop them off for the tyres to be fitted. And I also ot 4 "new" centre caps off ebay for £60 - not bad considering some vendore wanted £20 each plus postage)

So next choice is to replace the 255/35 19 summer rubber. Currently the car (previously driven for a year by the trader I bought it from, covering c40k miles in pursuit of cars to sell) is shod with the most budget of budget rubber - Accellera Phi from e-tyres (this is on the sidewall!). I have to say that in my normal driving (up to 90 on the motorway in the dry, less in the wet!) I've not noticed any grip issues at all (I'm sure the quattro helps, and I don't hammer my cars off the line of drift at speed into roundabouts) but they may be noisier than average. Difficult to tell as I don't have access to a Le Man on "premium" tyres to compare it to, and the section of the A41 I usually commute on is a bit rough (Watford to Aylesbury). Certainly on the M5 Gloucester to Exeter it seemed pretty quiet. And at £120 a corner that's cheap motoring! Still, enough tread I think to last me until November when I'll fit the winter rubber and have a couple of months to save for summer boots - I'm tending to a compromise with Uniroyal Rainsports at £200 a corner which have a good rating for low noise, and look to be reasonable all-rounders. I did look at getting them form here 4x 255 35-19 96Y UNIROYAL RAINSPORT 2 XL FR Sommerr. | eBay but by the time you add in £15-20 for fitting/valve/balancing/disposal plus carriage from Germany (a P4D online quote was about £130!!) they're no cheaper. I may email to see what the carriage cost would be (and I can legally dispose of 4 tyres per year at my local tip) but even if it's £50 the total will be £700 with fitting etc.

EDIT: Camskill currently have the Rainsport 2 at £158 delivered, so add fitting, say £173 per / £700 for 4. Have to check them when the time comes! (oh and the Accellera's are - gulp! - £89 each delivered!!!!)