Huh, I'm sorry to hear you're not satisfied with your new wheel setup in its current state.
When I first purchased my car and it had the factory 135 wheels with factory-spec sized rubber, it would occasionally tramline and follow the ruts and crowning of the road at highway speeds. This was really only noticeable on a particularly bad stretch of road (405N to the Fremont Bridge, for those that know the area). When I switched to my APEX ARC8s wrapped in 245/40R17 tires, I was worried there would be increased tramline and an alteration in steering feel with the wider tires. Fortunately, tramlining is no worse, and maybe even better, than the factory setup, although some of that initial instability might be due to needing an alignment. I haven't experienced that rear end instability you've described, and the ARC8s actually make the rear feel more planted than the factory 135s that had wider tires. Steering feel is great. I truly prefer my ARC8s to my Style 135s for steering feel, ride comfort, and performance.
Also, won't a spacer decrease offset, say a 10mm spacer would push a ET38 wheel to an effective ET28 wheel? If so, that's further from factory spec, which our Style 135s were ET47 front and ET50 rear.
When I first purchased my car and it had the factory 135 wheels with factory-spec sized rubber, it would occasionally tramline and follow the ruts and crowning of the road at highway speeds. This was really only noticeable on a particularly bad stretch of road (405N to the Fremont Bridge, for those that know the area). When I switched to my APEX ARC8s wrapped in 245/40R17 tires, I was worried there would be increased tramline and an alteration in steering feel with the wider tires. Fortunately, tramlining is no worse, and maybe even better, than the factory setup, although some of that initial instability might be due to needing an alignment. I haven't experienced that rear end instability you've described, and the ARC8s actually make the rear feel more planted than the factory 135s that had wider tires. Steering feel is great. I truly prefer my ARC8s to my Style 135s for steering feel, ride comfort, and performance.
Also, won't a spacer decrease offset, say a 10mm spacer would push a ET38 wheel to an effective ET28 wheel? If so, that's further from factory spec, which our Style 135s were ET47 front and ET50 rear.
i'm no stranger to tramlining; this was just plain instability. i've heard that new tires can be greasy, but i've had a lot of sets of new tires before and never experienced anything like this.
the steering is a lot lighter and more vague that it was with the 225's (on both 17" and 18" OEM wheels) with 10mm spacers.
i used 10mm spacers with both 17" Style 68s and the 18" 135Ms, making the front/rear offsets effectively ET37/ET40. my ARC-8's are ET38, but the fronts are 8.5" wide, so that would effectively be the same as the stock 18x8 front wheel at ET32 (i'm only accounting for the outside of the wheel, not the inside). so they are 5mm further out up front, and 2mm further out in the back, than my OEM setups with 10mm spacers; a 3mm spacer in the rear would bring the balance back (ha, now i've got led zep on the brain!).
Originally Posted by derbo
hopefully your alignment specs can be taken care of and restore your faith back in a square setup!
i hope so. the wheels are too pretty! haha. or i mount some 225/40/18's up front.
Originally Posted by Rovert
Yeah Peter you scare me. Get your alignment checked! Let us know what the results are.
will do. hopefully next week. it's just weird that with both sets of staggered wheels, it behaved wonderfully!
Originally Posted by kakashi169
Just sell the wheels to me Peter.
it may come to that!! we'll see after i get the car re-aligned.
peter
2004 330i ZHP 2005 330iT ZHP 2010 328iT M Sport 2012 128i M Sport
well, small update... got about 800km on the new tires and have been playing with the pressures are they are feeling much better (sitting at 35psi front and 38psi rear, cold). i still feel like 245's are possibly too wide for the front of a 99.9% daily driver car, as on-center feel is not as good (it's much better now with some miles on the tires), but the front end bite in corners now is nothing short of amazing! the car, especally with the camber settings i have, is setup to be very neutral, and is a now more neutral-oversteer than it was before (and it was very neutral before). but the lateral grip and balance in long, tight corners (like a highway entrance ramp) is simply awesome.
the stiffness of these PSS over my 17" PS A/S3's really makes the bilstein PSS shine even more, too.
so in order to potentially resolve the on-center feel issue, i'm going to put the stock front 135Ms with 225/40/18 on with my biggest spacers (12.5mm) and see how it feels, then will decide on if i'm replacing the front tires with 225/40/18 PSS or not.
in other news... i put a deposit on a 2003 mitsubishi montero limited today. really cool truck, relatively low miles (105K), good maintenance history. excited for ownership... and getting rid of the uncomfortable odyssey!! (the montero is light years more comfortable.)
peter
2004 330i ZHP 2005 330iT ZHP 2010 328iT M Sport 2012 128i M Sport
Congrats on the new Monty! And for mostly getting your wheels dialed in.
BTW,
I like my Ody and my 18yo daughter is upset that I plan to sell it soon--she loves driving it.
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Originally Posted by BMWCurves
