Last on tires

[Philip Montrowe]

Thank you everyone for all your great help.  I screwed up the last question
in my previous posting however, so I'll do it right this time.

I currently have Goodyear Eagle RSA 205/55 16s on the 97 A4 2.8 Quattro.
Some helpful suggestions have been for tires that are only available at
225/55 or 225/60. Can I go up to 225/60 and what is the effect or gain of
doing so?  I don't want to change my rims.

Also, the rear tires have less than a 1/16th of an inch left before the
tread warning bars are level with the tire and in the last 4 weeks or so I
have noticed that there is a lot of what seems to be "tire" noise coming
from the rear.  It is as noisy as it gets when you have the backseat folded
down because you have something long in the trunk.  Is this noise caused by
the tread warning bars or something else in the tire to alert the driver to
the need to replace the tires.  Or is it possibly some other thing
(doubtless costing thousands to fix).

Lastly, I have a TireRack place within about 20 miles of me but the
DiscountTireDirect web site seems to come in at about $15 a tire cheaper.  I
don't know if I can get the cheap UPS rate to ship DiscountTireDirect to a
local garage to do the fitting, so I might have to ship them to my home
which is about $20 a pair more expensive.  TireRack doesn't seem to make its
shipping prices easily available (I have to go through the rigmarole of
ordering first).  Does anybody have any experience in this?

Philip