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Author Topic: 245s.... anyone done it?  (Read 9541 times)

Offline pudding

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Re: 245s.... anyone done it?
« Reply #15 on: August 18, 2017, 08:11:28 pm »

Too much grip is an issue when you have drinking straws for driveshafts and gearboxes made of cottage pie, but neither apply to the GTI  :smiley:


I wasn't referring to components braking... I was trying to allude to the fact that giving a car too much grip can actually make it boring. You want a certain amount of movability.

225 with decent grippy tyres is perfectly acceptable without having to f*ck about with wide wings etc etc.

If you have not tried AD08R or R888R or any other grippy tyre then make that your first port of call.

Agree with that. A different way to skin a cat and all that, but I suspect AJP's vision is as much to do with stance as it is grip.

Semi track tyres are noisy as fck though...and shyte in the wet.


2007 ED30 | 2009 TDI 140 | 2016 BMW 330D

Offline AJP

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Re: 245s.... anyone done it?
« Reply #16 on: August 18, 2017, 08:12:57 pm »
Slix has the nail on the head....it's about how quickly the tyre can regain grip after hitting a bump.  Heavy wheels affect the damper rebound.  But you can tune that if you have adjustable suspension.

If you can find a bigger wheel that's no heavier (or preferably lighter) than stock, you'll be fine. 

Continental seem to make the lightest tyres out of the big players in my experience.  I went through all this in my Corrado days.  The combo of a 7x17 ProRace 1 + 205/40/17 ContiSport 3 was 2Kg lighter than the OEM 15" Speedlines with a cheapy 15" ditch finder  :smiley:

It is very possible to go large without the calories mate, but it's just the faff of researching weights and fitments, it can take a while!   Worth it though  :happy2:

Have you driven an R32?  If you haven't, it would give an idea of how a Golf with extra porkiness will feel.
I don't mind doing the research, that's half the fun of modding for me - having confidence in an upgrade/mod by actually understanding the science of it, rather than looking for a brand name or copying others and blindly  throwing money at things!

Completely agree with you and Slix regarding wheel and tyre weight. Adding unsprung weight would be going in the wrong direction. I suppose if I was really serious about this (at competition level or something) I'd also consider 17x9 rather than 18x9, to keep the weight closer to the hub, as well as making sure the wheels were of a mega light construction.

This gets closer and closer to proper race technology the more you define an ideal - and goes up in cost massively - but I like to think some ideas from those kind of cars can be passed down to our hatchbacks.

So, FWD race cars. What do they have to aid rotation and straight line grip? A diff, naturally, but I'm sure I've read about 'reverse stagger' - wider at the front than the back. It all makes interesting reading, anyway..!

I haven't driven an R32, Kev. But everything I've heard makes them sound a bit 'lardy' :)

Yeah all of that! Aggressive geometry, fat (light) wheels, light weight slicks, wide track (longer control arms, not spacers), camber plates, rock hard suspension, plated diffs (not torsens), ditching the interior, sequential boxes...all the good stuff  :happy2:  The one thing race cars don't care about is refinement and lifespan, so that is always something to consider with a road car.

Do you remember Fiesta XR2s? They had staggered axles, much wider front track  omppomp:  It worked really well as those things handled very nicely indeed.

Perhaps go wide track with TTRS control arms?

If you spent a week with an R32 and then got back into your car again, you'd be amazed at the difference.  The GTI is way more nimble.

Azev A, epic wheel.  StilAuto Sigma as well  :happy2:
I do remember the XR2. Never realised they had a wider front track, I've learnt something there!

There's maybe a compromise between a wider track in combination with wider tyres. Lots and lots of research needed for me on that one. There's always that worry that what is theoretically a performance upgrade turns out to be a downgrade in practice. But again, there's fun in learning.

The Sigma was the same design as the Azev A essentially, from what I remember? The holy grail of the Azev A was the mega-rare deep dish version. If you dig about now there are a few knocking about without the dish, but hardly any with that oldskool dish. And I reckon if you found any they'd be 4x100!

Similar design, and another thing of beauty, the OZ Futura:


Offline AJP

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Re: 245s.... anyone done it?
« Reply #17 on: August 18, 2017, 08:13:58 pm »
Which I can't upload a pic of for some reason

Offline rich83

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Re: 245s.... anyone done it?
« Reply #18 on: August 18, 2017, 08:16:19 pm »
AD08R are not that much noisy than MPSS.

Offline AJP

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Re: 245s.... anyone done it?
« Reply #19 on: August 18, 2017, 08:23:08 pm »
AD08R are not that much noisy than MPSS.
A bit iffy in the wet though?

Offline AJP

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Re: 245s.... anyone done it?
« Reply #20 on: August 18, 2017, 08:25:36 pm »

Too much grip is an issue when you have drinking straws for driveshafts and gearboxes made of cottage pie, but neither apply to the GTI  :smiley:


I wasn't referring to components braking... I was trying to allude to the fact that giving a car too much grip can actually make it boring. You want a certain amount of movability.

225 with decent grippy tyres is perfectly acceptable without having to f*ck about with wide wings etc etc.

If you have not tried AD08R or R888R or any other grippy tyre then make that your first port of call.

Agree with that. A different way to skin a cat and all that, but I suspect AJP's vision is as much to do with stance as it is grip.

Semi track tyres are noisy as fck though...and shyte in the wet.
I'd look at it as having the added bonus of beefy aesthetics, but not as a priority

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Re: 245s.... anyone done it?
« Reply #21 on: August 18, 2017, 09:09:40 pm »
You'll be having to battle with trial and fact to actually know if they'd benefit tbh, although you've more tyre to give you grip, you'll have more weight and rubbing (I'm sure you've already got a solution for this in mind though). Having just been moving; 245/35/19 and 265/35/19 alloys I can tell you they're extremely heavy and they were made by BBS for an M3.

To really get the benefit of wider tyres you need the right components in place to harvest the extra grip, you'll definitely feel an increase in cornering stability from them, but you depending on set up you could see Positive/negative or no difference at all to any track times. (If you were to track)

Offline AJP

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Re: 245s.... anyone done it?
« Reply #22 on: August 18, 2017, 10:03:46 pm »
You'll be having to battle with trial and fact to actually know if they'd benefit tbh, although you've more tyre to give you grip, you'll have more weight and rubbing (I'm sure you've already got a solution for this in mind though). Having just been moving; 245/35/19 and 265/35/19 alloys I can tell you they're extremely heavy and they were made by BBS for an M3.

To really get the benefit of wider tyres you need the right components in place to harvest the extra grip, you'll definitely feel an increase in cornering stability from them, but you depending on set up you could see Positive/negative or no difference at all to any track times. (If you were to track)
The main object would be maintaining grip under hard acceleration, in a straight line or exiting a corner - dialling off the lock. That's my main gripe.

Weight - yes, it'd be crucial to equal or reduce wheel and tyre weight to make this anything other than pointless. Some discussion about this earlier in the thread.

Rubbing - not an issue with the wider wings I mentioned in the original post. Without the availability of the Kerscher/SRS wings I might not have even considered this.

I agree with what you're saying about theory vs practice. While you could increase grip in general, there might be some undesirable side effects of a wider footprint (assuming all other variables like unsprung weight are kept in check). It might screw up the balance into the corner, off throttle, for example. I wouldn't want to spoil the recipe in that sense.

It'd be easy to get it wrong - increasing unsprung weight, neglecting geometry revision, etc. But there must be a way of getting it right. Or at least, moving a bit in the right direction.

Offline rich83

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Re: 245s.... anyone done it?
« Reply #23 on: August 18, 2017, 10:38:31 pm »
AD08R are not that much noisy than MPSS.
A bit iffy in the wet though?

Not really.... just dont drive like a clown in the wet!  :signLOL:


Are we talking road use here or track use?

Offline AJP

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Re: 245s.... anyone done it?
« Reply #24 on: August 18, 2017, 10:45:49 pm »
AD08R are not that much noisy than MPSS.
A bit iffy in the wet though?

Not really.... just dont drive like a clown in the wet!  :signLOL:
Never mate. Too many sh*t drivers around making things unsafe in those conditions in the first place.

Cold, wet, dark, or any combination of those: slow and steady.

Dry, warm, good visibility, in those exact conditions: sometimes have a bit of fun.

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Re: 245s.... anyone done it?
« Reply #25 on: August 18, 2017, 10:46:17 pm »
Road use btw, Rich.

Offline rich83

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Re: 245s.... anyone done it?
« Reply #26 on: August 18, 2017, 10:59:29 pm »
I think you are over thinking all of this then TBH. Just get some better tyres and that will do to be honest.

If you are worried about grip out of corners and you are struggling to put the power down out of corners then I would suggest you are being a bit too eager to stamp on the loud pedal. You can probably fix 95% of the problems you are trying to fix by just feeding in the power a bit more subtly.

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Re: 245s.... anyone done it?
« Reply #27 on: August 18, 2017, 11:45:24 pm »
I think you are over thinking all of this then TBH. Just get some better tyres and that will do to be honest.

If you are worried about grip out of corners and you are struggling to put the power down out of corners then I would suggest you are being a bit too eager to stamp on the loud pedal. You can probably fix 95% of the problems you are trying to fix by just feeding in the power a bit more subtly.
Possibly. Although there are times when I feel it'd make a much quicker car if I could just stamp on it.

I'm on PS4 at the minute. They're brilliant in the corner. It's just those moments in the lower gears, in a straight line, where it'd be nice to just floor it and be off, instead of playing the throttle vs boost game.

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Re: 245s.... anyone done it?
« Reply #28 on: August 18, 2017, 11:53:37 pm »
You need fwd then in that case.

Offline Shoduchi

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Re: 245s.... anyone done it?
« Reply #29 on: August 19, 2017, 04:16:39 pm »
You need fwd then in that case.

You mean AWD, right? :confused:

I'd recommend the AD08R or Pilot Cup 2 during the dry season. It would help a lot. They're also not that noisy.