This is a follow up piece of my tyre review articles. Do check out my earlier articles to get a better context of the story.
Just the other day, my wife saw a patch of oil on the drive-way, she started complaining that my car was leaking oil again. In actual fact, the first time she saw a patch on my driveway was due to a slow diesel leak along the fuel line, so my car wasn’t really leaking oil.
She called me while I was at work to inform me of the oil stain and I made a point to check the current parking spot where I parked my car to see if there was a patch and lo and behold, there was one, although it wasn’t large.
I drove to the nearest shop which was opened at the time and found a tyre shop in Puchong. The workers were already closing up but they were kind enough to jack my car up to do a quick inspection and what we found wasn’t an oil leak from the engine but rather from my front left absorber. It seemed that it had literally ejaculated all of the oil inside it.
Yes, that is right, my front absorber was leaking and leaking bad. This gave me the opportunity to upgrade to a set of coilovers and after a couple of weeks, I finally received it. Being very happy I brought it to my local mechanic to get it installed.
Now what has this got to do with tyres? Well actually it did sort of relate but let me get to the point. After installing the front shocks, the one thing that my mechanic pointed out that my tyres were indeed rubbing against the springs! Due to GoodYear’s tyre design which made the sidewall portrude out, it ended up rubbing the springs. But that wasn’t the only case. The rims offset as well as the diameter of the spring all played a role in it and I had to settle with a 5mm spacer for my rims.
Next issue that we faced was that the rear shocks were too low, couple that with the extra 5mm offset (due to the spacer), whenever I go over large bumps or undulations on the highway, my rear tyres would rub against the fenders. Yes, I was running 265mm width tyres when it was advised that the widest I should be going was 255mm.
I guess my point is that whenever you decide to select your rims, tyres and suspensions, make sure that you get them all within spec of your car. Especially the offset, the right tyre width and thickness. Sometimes having a nice flushed look is good but it may not be as practical especially with how poor our road conditions are.
The few key things you need to understand is what is the offset range your car’s model can accommodate, the width of the rim which will also determine the width of the tyres you will be getting followed by the rest of the tyre specs.
So before you get “poisoned” by your mates or by the guy in the tyre shop trying to offload a set of rims on you, be sure to have a guide available or book marked on your mobile device.
- Read Part 0 of my tyre review series
- Read Part 1 of my tyre review series
- Read Part 2 of my tyre review series
- Read Part 3 of my tyre review series
*This is the personal opinion of the writer and does not necessarily represent the views of Autofreaks.com
