kwobes

hi guys, trying to get some insight here...I have a 2004 a6 2.7t s-line. i have the stock s-line 18 inch wheels and love them but am considering using some 17 inch fat five wheels for the winter so i can get a little more tire thickness to help with pot holes in the winter time as i had to get all 4 of my wheels straightened from this past winter. i know the fat fives are a little wider but am curious if they can just fit right on my car. i only want to stay stock so i dont want any aftermarket junk.
any help will be appreciated. thanks.

Gsrob

Just out of curiosity, what do you mean by you had to get your wheels straightened? ie... They were bent and needed to be repaired somewhere? I believe I am having this same problem for at least one wheel. I have the Audi BBS 17" Mesh wheels with 235 tires... It's wearing at a much higher rate and in strange places. I will post a picture. I'm not trying to highjack your thread but it maybe that we both have the same problem. As you can see, there is a significant amount of wear on the outside shoulder of the tire, but more in some spots of the shoulder than others. From what I've read, a bent wheel can cause this. Unfortunately, my control arms are also currently shot, so who knows. The best I could do was rotate it to the back for now.

SloopJohnB@mac.com

Quite likely they were bent. But for yours, just jack up one side and spin the wheel..you'll SEE if it's bent. They're usually bent on the inside.
I have 17" wheels (not fat fives..pieplates) on wife's 2K4.2A6 and she bends a couple every winter hitting potholes or curbs. Fact of life.
Wear on the outside edges is more likely bad alignment, excessive toe-in. It could be too much positive camber, but unlikely. Another source of wear on the outside edges of the tire and in your case it looks like both inside and outside edges is low tire pressure. Run those puppies up to 36psi or so. If you're really **** or tracking it you can use an infrared temp gauge and check your inside/middle/outside tire temps right after you stop the car….hotter edges are low tire pressure, hot center, too high.

Gsrob

Hey Sloop, I have regularly checked the tire pressure. It's been at a steady 36-38 psi. When I first noticed this wear pattern, that's the first thing I checked. The reason I say I think they are bent, aside from abnormal wear along the outside shoulder, is because there is a slight 'shimmy/shake' between 40-45mph. It could also be in need of balancing, but I just got these tires mounted and balanced 3k miles ago and that particular tire looks that bad already. The other side tires look brand new with **** and all.

kwobes

Well I first started with the balancing and allignment. and a couple months back i actually put a whole control arm kit upper/lower etc in as well. i was still getting vibrating issues big time. my tires were worn similar to yours but was told that was more related to the car was badly out of allignment. also when i was getting my car allignment done after winter i was told all 4 of my wheels were bent, which in most cases you can see it from the inner of the wheel. so i had 2 of them done at a time and each time i felt improvement. i think it was 85$ a wheel to be straightened. after all 4 were done it was pretty smooth again but i could still feel something. so town fair tire near me has to match any tire prices so i found a great deal for pirreli all seasons on tire rack for 80 bucks each and town fair tire had the for 193$ each so they had to match the tire rack price. so i had those put on and now its a very smooth ride.

the reason for the fat fives was i was considering getting a set to use in the winter but wasnt sure if the wheel was too wide for my car as ive only seen the fat fives on the 4.2

SloopJohnB@mac.com

Bent wheels get that way because they hit a pothole or curb…tires also get damaged, often invisibly, when that wheel is damaged. I've had issues with Dunlop SP9000 tires for 14 years…they tend to blister on the outer sidewall when a wheel gets bent, even though the inner sidewall doesn't appear to be damaged although the inner rim gets bent. Also, the odd wheel will shed a wheel weight held on with that adhesive tape they use. I've had wheel weights come off while I've washed wheels between summer/winter seasons. The best stuff I've used to reattach one (you can see where it was and often how big it was by the clean spot or the old tape) is GM trim adhesive double sided tape…IIRC the red release tape on grey adhesive is the strongest.

Another issue is how good the repaired wheel is…my Audi pie plate rims aren't forged, so fixing them isn't that tough, but unless the wheels are heat treated after repair (they aren't because that would involve stripping and redoing the paint and cost more than a new wheel!) the repair involves a certain amount of cold working, even if the shop heats up the aluminum somewhat. They cannot heat it enough to anneal much less recrystallize or equalize the hardworking. Not to mention the memory effect of the aluminum wanting to either go back to it's 'bent' configuration or conversely to try to pull the surrounding metal into the cold worked configuration. Long story short, did/does the repair hold or make the wheel susceptible to further bending? Hard to tell…my wife's car can have bent wheels without her telling me she hit a pothole….and when she does confess she hit a big one and I go out and look at that wheel..presto, bent rim and blistered tire.

Lastly, how good are your shocks? In the old days it was pretty obvious shocks died after about 30K miles….maybe the steel wheels and tire assemblies were heavy enough and suspensions crappy enough and OEM shocks cheap enough to notice a big difference in aftermarket shocks…not to mention the beating balljoints take after shocks are worn. Bad shocks don't help to keep tires loaded evenly on the road, much less poor roads and you get unevenly worn tires. In fact, tire shops used to have pictures and you can still get them on the web that may identify tire or suspension problems.

http://www.procarcare.com/includes/c...dtirewear.html

SloopJohnB@mac.com

It's likely a problem with that side of the car:

http://www.procarcare.com/includes/c...dtirewear.html

Gsrob

Thanks for the link, I had been looking at something similar to attempt a diagnosis. I think my first step will be replacing all of the front upper/lower control arms and give an alignment a try. It's interesting what you noted about the SP Sport 9000s giving you trouble as that is exactly what I'm running. It kills me that after a little over 3k miles I'll most likely need to replace two of the tires for matching front ones.

kwobes

thanks sloop. Yes mine were bent for sure, all 4 of them. so thats why for this winter i will be looking into getting 17's to help a little bit more with regards to all of the pot holes here in new england. im only bringing this up now becuase i can get a nice set of fat fives but just not sure if they can fit thats all.

Gsrob

What size tires fit the wheels? Any idea?

Edit: Kwobes, where did you take the bent wheels to be fixed? How much was it?