So I found some nice 20s that I liked from Craigslist and the guy sold em to me with the existing tires he had on. They are some Nankang 225/35ZR20s. I'm happy, I only paid $600 for rims/tires combo and the tires have a good amount of tread left. Then, I went to Firestone and had them put on with the lifetime alignment/wheel balance/rotation (think I paid too much for it, like $240).

Now I love the way my car looks, but!!!!!! the road noise from these tires are like 10x more than my stock 17s! Is this because I'm moving from a 55 to a 35 series tire? If I changed to another brand of tires, will I have less road noise? If so, what do you guys suggest? (I need something with ride comfort/long tread life/not too expensive/summer tire...I live in San Diego). Also, will moving to a 245/35ZR20 increase or decrease road noise?

I also noticed that the car is a LOT more sensitive to bumps and slight banks in the road. (The wheel turns itself sometimes at really low speeds.) At higher speeds, my car pulls to the left slightly...does this mean it was misaligned?

Another thing, I wanted to drop my front end a bit, and wanted to know the difference between going with just eibachs with stock shocks or going with the k-sport coilovers. I was worried about bottoming out with just the springs and stock shocks on my 04 SL, but also don't want an extremely stiff ride. I want to maintain the comfort cruising ability of the car while dropping the front to get rid of the extreme wheel gap.

 

yes about the lower profile tires

 

THe tires are proabably pretty worn out too right?

 

Actually the tires I would say still have at least 50% on them. I want to drive as much with them as I can before I swapped them out for new tires. Can you guys suggest a tire in a 245/35/20 that would be a LOT quieter? I'm looking at the Falken FK-452 right now and it looks pretty good from all the reviews at tires-easy.com.

 

i have a 01 max with 235/40/18 on it. i had the same problem with the road noise and the wheel tuning its self at times, but the pulling it self to the left was fixed with another alingment, and more weights on the weels for blance. i like the weights that fit on the inside of the rim rather than the ones that are on the outside edge.

 

Wheel noise comes with lower profile tires, but you can offset it if you get some quieter tires.

Bump steer is a result of the wider tires, nothing can really be done about that.

 

It comes with the territory..20" wheels=bumpier ride and more noise. Cant have one without the other.

 

Bump! Im about to get some 20's as well and really need to know what everyone thinks is the best way to lower the car without rubbing or bottoming out. I think Eibachs and any struts will do! but what does everyone think?

 

i got my 20" on 225/35/20.

but i dont have any problem with it.

 

You might want to look into getting better tires.

 

You might want to get some thicker and better tires. 225/35/20s are for people with compact cars that want 20s, you might want to get some 245s or 255s for the 6th gen... and try to steer clear of Nankang tires if you can.

 

Epsilon, please stop bumping old, dead threads. PWing for post count is a bannable offense.