Re: Need tire/wheel advice, quick!

Carbon wrote:
> I have an 04 MSM with 17" Racing Hart wheels. About 6 months ago the
city 
> scraped the road I take to work and the next morning I whacked both
right 
> rims on a manhole which was sticking up probably 2" from the roadway. 
> Nose to tail traffic, I didn't even see it.
> 
> Both right tires have been leaking air ever since, about 10 lbs/week. 
> Today I got a (non-repairable) flat on one of the left side tires. The 
> tire shop checked out the tires and found the right front is noticeably 
> out of round, the right rear slightly less so. They thought possibly the

> rims could be repaired but didn't know of any local shops that did it.
> 
> Some options, keeping in mind the car has 30k miles and I need new tires

> anyway:
> 
> 1. Buy new 205/17/40 tires and get the rims repaired. How expensive is 
> this? In general, how repairable are tires like these? I'm worried that 
> being aluminum alloy (I think) they have been weakened and will be more 
> susceptible to damage in the future. I'm in Central Florida.

You are correct about them being made from aluminum alloy.
I know several people that are rolling on at least one repaired wheel 
without any problems.
The cost is fairly reasonable, should be less than replacing a 
performance tire on a wheel that size.

> 2. Get new 16" wheels and 205/16/45 tires. The current 17" wheels are 17

> lbs each and I will not be considering anything heavier. I'm
considering: 
> 
> OZ Crono HT's, 15.5 lbs, 42mm offset, $203.
> 
> S****t Edition D4's, 17 lbs, 38mm offset, $75 (closeout).
> 
> The OZ wheels look much nicer, very close to my current Racing Harts. I 
> had pretty much decided to get those until I scrolled to the bottom of 
> the page and saw how much cheaper the S****t Editions were. Which wheel
is 
> likely to be stronger? Otherwise, does anyone know of a strong, light, 
> cheap 16" wheel?

Can't say which would be stronger. Chris D. has a set of 16 inch wheels 
that look nice, do not weigh too much, and are reasonably priced, but I 
can never remember what brand and model they are.

> Tires. I'm not too which is the best deal price performance-wise. 
> Throwing cost out the window, it'd be OZ Crono's and Goodyear Eagle F1
GS-
> D3's.
> 
> What do all you experts think? (Quickly -- I'm driving on two bent rims 
> and a space-saver spare!)

Experts, ha!

I would check out the price to have the wheels repaired. If there is 
some problem with repairing them or if you would rather get new wheels 
anyway, one thing to consider is that there is another person out there 
who is in the same position as you.

The undamaged Racing Hart wheels you have should fetch a good amount of 
money from someone who has damaged one or two of their MSM wheels and is 
determined to stay with the stock set-up.

I have found that selling  the wheels individually gets a lot more money 
than selling them as a set.

Pat