[Nick Koan]

Hah, so this wasn't for performance advantage (duh) and he fesses up

http://forums.nasioc.com/forums/show...2&postcount=38

Originally Posted by Sporqster

OK time to fess up....

Here's the REAL reason I'm running bigger tires in the rear... rims are offset, 7.5" and 8.5". didn't realize this when I picked them up used. No biggie, they still fit fine with 225's all around, which is what I had been running. THEN Turner Motorsports (who races BMW's) is selling 245/45-17's and 225/45-17's leftover racing tires for $60 each - what a steal... bought them without thinking much about it, thinking I would put them on my wife's Porsche (which also has 7.5" and 8.5" front/rear 17" rims). She, in the meantime bought 16" rims with hoosiers already mounted on them. Fine I'll just mount them on my own rims! it wasn't until I got them mounted on the rims and started stacking them on the trailer that I realized the rears were so much bigger... So I made up a rationalization to use them... after all they looked cool on the car I thought.

Prolly asking a lot to put 245's on a 7.5" rim... guess I'll have to get some 225's for the rear...

So suppose I did burn up the diff- what would be the symptoms and would you ever be able to tell? You wouldn't think that 26 extra revolutions per mile would wear out a gear, at least it wouldn't seem that way to me. If it did it would seem like it might as well be a locker. I could certainly see how locking down the front wheels and putting the back end on a dyno or something would let the magic diff smoke out, but 26 rev's a mile? That doesn't seem like a lot of slippage for a diff to handle, and a risk I took, primarily in the name of cheapness.

Maybe I should just ebay the whole wheel set up... shame, 'cause I think they look cool. Maybe I can find a race team that discards 245-40-17's...