RE: Ben Howell and his 17" ... well, you know.

[audidudi@mindspring.com (Jeffrey J. Goggin)]

Good work although based upon my experience/installation, I'm guessing that
you had to involve a baseball bat and/or grinder at some point in the
process.  If not, then please let me know the offset as I've got a set of
235/40-17 SP-8000s that are just laying around while my Ur-Q has its
drivetrain out...  :^)

The 8.5x18s I borrowed are actually for a Porsche 944T and I had to
fabricate an adapter so the bolt patterns would work together ... it also
served as a 21mm spacer to reduce the 56mm offset to 35mm, which is closer
to what's actually needed.  Unfortunately, there isn't enough clearance
between the tire and front strut housing for me to be confident it won't rub
at speed (there is less than .25") and on the other side of the wheel, it
would hit the fender lip with the stock alignment settings.  I could always
have removed the lip and run more negative camber but I'm not that much of a
slave to fashion and in the end, I decided that over the remaining life of
the car, paying $145.00 per tire (215/45-17 BFG Comp TA) is a LOT better
than paying $285.00 per tire (235/35-18 Pirelli P-Zero), especially
considering my penchant for driving nails and pieces of re-bar through them
at regular intervals.  In two years, I've lost two tires to foreign object
damage and when your car is a quattro, this means replacing not one but TWO
tires or even FOUR if they're worn enough.  BTDT, twice.  :^(

(If you want to weep, check out
http://www.mindspring.com/~audidudi/HTML/UrQ/Ur-QTires.htm to see the photo
I took the last time this happened to me ... sniff, sob)
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   / |      _| o    | \       _| o  Jeffrey Goggin
  /__| | | / | | __ |  | | | / | |  audidudi@mindspring.com
 /   | |_| \_| |    |_/  |_| \_| |  http://www.mindspring.com/~audidudi/
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