Now is it me, or does the rear need to be dropped some? It looks better w/the 14: wheels. The rake of the car currently hasthe back jacked up some, maybe it has new springs out back or something????







And now, of the "infamous" Flying Pig my driver's side window is blessed with

 

Looks great- heck, you even lucked out and found a tire installer that actully knew what the heck he was doing- got the balance dots lined up with the stems.

 

the tires look pretty nice, i've been on tirerack.com a lot, but the tires that i'd like to get i can only find in say a 245/50 ratio which would require the 16in wheels, so if i can find some GTA/TA crosslaces cheep, i'll probalby get that set of kuhmo's. Those do look good though, i remember on our planes, we would try to line thebalance mark up with a spot on the wheel that should already be in place, if the mark wasn't visible, then the tire would be lined up with the valve stem.


P.S.
don't know if your back end is actually jacked up, but it's a possibility that if it's not then ur front end might have some worn struts and springs on it....might have it sitting lower than it should, and making the back appear a lil' higher than it would be. lol...

 

Actually, new shocks/struts all around. Original springs too. Front springs are slightly modified, as when I was replacing the ball joint/struts, the drivers side spring had 1/2 a coil broken off . I removed the loose piesc, replaced all parts on that side, and when I did the drivers side I just hacksawed off a piece the same size, at an angle to help lay it flat.

btw: tires delivered $217, have them mounted & balanced $26

edit: yes I know they're all origonal (or factory replacements) as they all have the GM labels/stickers on them.

 

So that's what the **** those dots were on my Kumho's.


Installer didnt' do that for me.

 

I just figured they were there to add some color for the factory workers, you know, jsut seeing black all day w/an occasional white stripe

 

I thought those were just a guide to start with, and the final balancing would be "close" to that factory approximation? No?

 

That is correct Tom. The dot on the tire represents the light spot on the tire and is to be matched with the stem on the rim- which is mostly the heavy spot of the rim. This will hopefully keep things where less weight is needed to balnce the assembly- but yes it still does need the be spin balanced.

Dean

 

to take this further- My buddy at the local race alignment shop let me spin just my rims only(before tires mounted- but with stems installed) to check for the light and heavy side of the rim- two of my tire dots line up to the rims and the other two are off by aprox 4-6 inches diameter wise. I run tape on weights on the backside of the irocs- this process keeps the weights to a bare minimum.

I have numerous little performance handling tricks- All very, very minor- but all combined, they add up.

 

Thanks for the info!