More Tyred

 The wheels are back - so of course it's raining. It was a lovely spring day when I picked them up four hours ago.

here it is when the 185/60s were new

And this is it today. You'll have to take my word for it that it looks MUCH better with the narrower, taller tyres on.

It's also raised an inch, so when I have time I need to re-adjust the speedo & lower it 1/2" to reduce the arch gap even more. To do that I may need to buy shorter springs for the front, but that's a job for another day.

Tyred

 Yes, yes I know I've had all winter to notice, but I've been "distracted" & it wasn't until I took the Stylus into work after taxing it (£££££££££) that I noticed the front tyres were down to the wear bars. This was chiefly because I'd swapped them with the rears after noticing the limited slip diff was wearing them rather quicker than I was expecting. The rears (was fronts remember) are fine, but unfortunately I need to replace all four as I'm getting the tyres I want, replacing the ones that came as a deal with the wheels.

So off will come the Yokohama 185/60x13s & on will go Uniroyal Rainsport 175/70x13. Half the price, twice the life, more or less as good in the dry (In road conditions), much much better in the wet. Also 10mm narrower, 25mm bigger in diameter.

Anyway, here it is in the car park at work. I took it in after checking the weather forecast as I rolled out of bed at 06:00. No rain.

By 09:00, the rain alarm on my phone went off & the weather radar showed a whole storm coming from the south. So I moved it into the underground car park whose ramps are too narrow for the leviathan electric 4x4s that infest most of the parking spaces. Why do seemingly intelligent people spend £100k on a car that doesn't fit in a parking space??

But the big news is of course that the Stylus is back on the road & I'm having a few of those "sh1t this really is fast" moments. Nothing scary, just squeeze the throttle pedal & it's doing 70 before I've had time to look down at the speedo.

It's booked into "Wheels Day", the Surrey Street Rodders annual display of anything interesting on wheels, this year it's in Newbury - not actually in Surrey at all then. In fact, I've only known the Surrey Street Rodders hold it in Surrey once. It's on Good Friday & is usually a fantastic car show if you want to attend.