BillA4

Will be taking delivery of a 2001 1.8T with Quattro & Tip. I have a lot of questions for you experts..hope you're patient with new owners.

Is there anything I should check or do at delivery. Obviously I'll look at paint condition and to be sure everything works. Anything else?

Any recommendations for winter tires? This car comes with 16 inch tires on the sports package. Can I buy a 15 inch winter tire and wheel package from Tire Rack without having any problems running smaller rims? I think the overall diameter is the same.

What's do you get for gas mileage on trips and then when you''re in normal surburban mixed driving? And I didn't test drive the car at high speed on the expressway, but can I expect a stable ride running at 75 and without pushing the engine?

Thanks.

Andy Hedin

<i>Any recommendations for winter tires? This car comes with 16 inch tires on the sports package. Can I buy a 15 inch winter tire and wheel package from Tire Rack without having any problems running smaller rims? I think the overall diameter is the same.</i>

15" steel rims and winter tires fit no problem. This would be the ultimate winter-tire setup as the contact patch of the 15" setup is ideal for snow. Plus, it's probably the cheapest solution. The tire size of choice would be 195-65-15 which has pretty much the same exact rolling diameter as your 205-55-16 tires.

As far as tire choice goes, there is quite a lot of discussion on the Wheel/Tire forum. The choices have changed a bit since I purchased my Pirelli Winter 210 Asimmetrico's a few season's back. Michelin makes a nice Pilot Alpin. Pirelli has the new Winter 210 SnowSport, Dunlop has the nice Winter Sport M2....all three of these tires are more "performance" oriented winter tires. I could go on and on....best bet... Do some searches on the archives, read all the info on the Tire Rack web site, perhaps just ask this question on the Wheel/Tire forum if you need more info.

RickM

Andy has already answered the snow tires question the same way I would. I'll just add that I did exactly what you're proposing to do: I got snows mounted on 15" steel rims from Tirerack. No problem.

As for delivery, yes, check <i>everything</i>. Look for exterior blemishes, obviously. Also look at the finish, because dealers are notoriously bad in the prep department; someone posted a while back about some weird reflections in their dark-colored finish, which really detracted from the appearance. The dealer's attempts to cure them with waxing only made them worse. As I recall, it turned out to simply be a bad wax job by the guy who prepped the car for delivery. Once all the wax was stripped off, and then properly reapplied, everything was fine. But check everything else, too -- radio/CD/tape, climate control, sunroof, lights, the works.

You can expect a very stable ride at 75mph. Hell, these things are built for the autobahns. My 1.8 runs just a thin hair over 3,600 RPMs at 80mph. Still plenty of headroom there, and the ride and handling are beautiful at that speed. The one problem I predict you'll encounter is keeping your speed DOWN -- it's easy not to realize just how fast you're going, the car is so damn stable at speed.

Expect your gas mileage to be somewhat less than what you might expect it to be at first. It'll get progressively better as it gets broken in. If you look through the archives, you'll see wildly varying reports of mileage from old and new owners alike. I mostly chalk those up to different driving styles.

Congrats, and ENJOY!

queezy

The controls next to the speedo / tach should have a 'spring return' when pushed. So far I seem to be the only one who got a bad one but it's worth checking.

I've heard from others that the tireRack blizzak / steel rim pkg works well. I ordered it yesterday.

-q '01 QTA