The Right Tires

The Challenge:
The car came from the previous owner with:

• Front
• 225/45 ZR 17 Kumho Ecsta
• Cracked sidewalls indicating dry-rot. It does not look severe but I've had bad experience with dry-rot and I'd rather not risk a tire flying apart on a car that carries no spare.
• Rear
• 235/45 R 17 Mastercraft Glacier-Grip II
• The tires are not the right size- they are suppose to be 245/40
• There were holes in the tire for studs

It rides terrible (compared to another M Roadster I test drove and compared to my expectations) with this tire combination.

The local independant BMW repair shop I purchased the car from offered to swap out the tires with some Michelin Pilots they had in stock but I wanted the front and rear tires to match and I like to do research on tires so I took a discount on the car rather than take the tires.

I'm all about balancing performance, ride, and bad weather traction. I was looking forward to finding the right tires to meet my needs.

We do have snow so my plan is to:

• Keep the snow tires for winter driving
• Purchase two rear wheels and put something street oriented on them
• Get rid of the front tires with something that matches the new back tires.

Imagine that, a world class sports car with a matching set of tires.

The Tires:

After spending some quality time at http://www.tirerack.com/ I decided on a set of Continental ExtremeContact DW. This car is my daily driver to and from work so I need a good blend of ride and handling. All the reviews looked good to me.

The Wheels:

I purchased two rear wheels from http://www.originalwheels.com/. The are no repaired or imitation BMW wheels. They are BMW original equipment in excellent condition - I suppose from a crashed MZ3 somewhere.

9 inch wide

They will spin them when they put the tires on and we'll see how straight they are...

My experience has been that tires make a huge difference in how a car drives. I have high expectations.