How well will the 245/45/16s fit in the front?

In the future I would like to get the combo to be somethingl like 255/40/17 for the fronts and 235/40/17 for the rears. But will 245/40/17s also fit in the fronts?

BTW, what do you mean by "shaved" tires?

Thanks.

Dan.

 

yes, i would like to know the answer to this too...

 

Evil - I hope you made a mistake in your statement above about putting the 255s on the front and the 235s on the rear. It should be the other way around (or you'll have massive oversteer). Also, for a 235 width, a 45 series is a better match than a 40 series for the stock tire diameter.

Shaved tires are, quite literally, shaved. This is done primarily for two reasons. The first is related to heat build-up and dissipation. The more material (i.e. tread) a tire has, the more heat it will retain during usage. Excessive heat is a bad thing for a tire, as they tend to loose their traction ability beyond a certain point. Tires generally have a nominal operating temperature that maximizes their grip. Exceeding that temp will decrease performance and accelerate wear. This is why racing slick tires actually have very little tread depth (I know, they don't actually have 'tread' at all). It's to minimize the retained heat within the tire and increase the dissipation. Shaving a street tire removes this 'excess' material, thus improving the tire's on-track performance and stability.

The second reason is related to tread flex (is there a more technical term for this? anyone?). The taller a tire's tread is ('taller' refering to the distance from the bottom of the grooves to the top of the tread block), the more the tread blocks flex during acceleration, deceleration, and particularly cornering. Under hard cornering, the tire will actually 'walk' sideways because of this flex. You could think of this as a type of lateral 'slip', even though the tire is not actually slipping on the surface. It simply follows a different path than the nominal centerline of the tire (i.e. - where it's pointing). Obviously, this is not desireable in racing applications.

I do not know the exact difference in tread life between those three tires, but I would think it is almost negligible. My best guess would be that the S-03s are slightly better, but not by much, if anything. I think the biggest difference is in wet traction. The S-03s reign supreme.

 

LOL. I got a little bit careless right there. You're right about the other way around.

But yeah, that's the combination that I'm thinking about, running those size tires on some RP-01s, that is if I can ever get my hands on a set of them.

Thanks for catching the mistake.

Dan.