one flat turns to four

[cody at 5000tq.com]

Quoting Huw Powell <audi at humanspeakers.com>:

>
>> The mini-spare is supposedly rated for 50 miles, so if the factory says
>> you can use a mini-spare on your Quattro, you can be assured that even
>> that much of a mismatch won't blow the diffs. If it did/could/might,
>> Audi would supply a full-size spare and caution us never to use the
>> space saver mini spare.
>
> The space saver spares included with quattros are the same height as  
> stock tires.

I'd add that 50 miles of wear on a spare would hardly be the same as  
the 10,000 miles he could get out of the rest of the three used tires.

My take on this subject: I've gone as far as buying four used tires  
which were worn the same to get by until I could afford buy four new  
ones. No quattro owned by me will have tires replaced in less than a  
set unless I'm replacing a nearly new tire.

On the flip side the GMP shop car A5q used to run staggered wheel  
sizes, and for a time even different widths left to right (we were  
demonstrating different designs of the same wheel). It had a 20x10 and  
a 20x9 on the front, and a 20x11 and a 20x10 on the rear. I forget the  
tire sizes. Ran like that for about 7,500 miles. The rule of thumb we  
use for customer running staggered wheel/tire sizes on AWD cars  
(mostly Porsche) is no more than 2% circumference difference.

http://gmpperformance.com/index.cfm?pg=carGallery&makerID=2&vGroupID=287&mode=displayVehicle&VID=3268#imageSet_14

-Cody