New Wheels for Impretzel

Due to the terrible state of the Subaru's tyres (in the wet anyway - in the dry the slicks were great!), we finally bit the bullet and ordered a new set. As is the way of things, we upgraded to a new set of wheels at the same time.

Before:

After:

The car was still running the original 15" steel wheels and tyres that it came with from the factory. When we bought it, we had the option of upgrading to the optional 16" Subaru mags, but the cost was rather steep - $2600. However, that was 5 years ago now, and 60,000kms.

I priced up a set of tyres locally to suit the original wheels, and that came in at $800. The tyre shop happened to have a set of the factory 16" Subaru wheels under their staircase from a previous customer that they wanted to get rid of though, and offered them to us for $1200 with tyres. However, the wheels themselves were VERY second hand, with a lot of kerb rash around the rim. And they're not really the prettiest things in the world.

So I gave m'verygoodfriend Sam down at Tempe Tyres in Sydney a ring. He advised that he could do the set of 4 Lenso GF7 Blacks, complete with Khumo KU31 sport tyres for $1250 all up, including fitting the tyres and balancing them, and transport up to Cairns. It was the last set they had, and was too good a deal to pass up. A couple of days later, I dropped down to the local TNT depot and picked up the pallet:


It fit neatly in the back of the Pathfinder! Of course, we loaded it in with their forklift. Unfortunately, I don't have a forklift at home, so needed to unpack it all in the back of the car, and get the wheels out one by one.


Pretty new tyres.


Everything was packed down really well, and was in perfect condition. Always a bit nerve-wracking when you order such expensive things from so far away, but in this case they really came through. They've got a lot of experience in shipping wheels around the country, and it showed out in their packaging.


The wheels themselves are hard to photograph, and this is one of the best shots I have of them. Unfortunately due to the rain that was around yesterday, the photos of them on the car didn't really come out very well. They do look a LOT better in person than these photos show though.

The new wheels were no good stacked in the living room though, so it was time to spend some quality time with the jack and wheel brace.


Plus, it gave me a good chance to inspect the brakes and suspension around the car!!!


The new wheels came complete with a new set of security wheel nuts that need a special tool to undo them. Hopefully this will result in the nice new wheels staying ON the car. Not that Cairns has a particularly high crime rate (like anywhere, some places are better than others), but every little bit helps.

All done, at night:



And in the day:

So far, I'm very impressed with the wheel and tyre combination. Despite going up in wheel diameter by 2", and thus decreasing the tyre sidewall by the same amount, ride comfort is unchanged. The new tyres are lovely and quite, and drive beautifully despite being considerable wider and lower-profile than the old ones.

The only downside is that the wider wheels protrude out further from the guards than the old ones, and coupled with teh lack of mudflaps on the car resulted in a freshly-washed car being very obviously dirty after a short drive yesterday on wet roads. So I may need to see how many kidneys Subaru want in exchange for a set of proper moulded mudflaps.

But it's a small price to pay for a good boost to the appearance of the car and it's driving habits. I look forward to getting the tyres scrubbed in and working well!