Had the tires installed and the car aligned today. The tires are awesome! The car has never handled so good since I owned it...
"When I bought the car it had 16" Torque Stars with bald stock size tires. The got the charger 18" Rims and needed tires as an emergency so I got 35% tread life 245/45/18 Eagle RS-Poops for like 30 bucks a tire.Once I got those and drove the car around I realized the every time I hit a dip in the Highway the rear fenders would scrape against the sidewall of my tire! Solution!!! Roll my fenders! Did it the cheap $8 home depot PVC pipe with rubber couplers for padding and a heat gun! The rolled fenders came out great!
Then I drove around with a transmission in the trunk of the car for about 1 week before driving the car up to Bill's to swap the trans. My old trans hit 296 degrees on that jaunt! Drove back with a great mildly built trans! Then when I got to the city I realized that my rear shocks refused to come back up. The trans in the trunk finished off my rear shocks and my front shocks and mounts were worn too! Did the suspension all around. Previous owner had the bright idea to replace his warn shocks with junkyard pulled units! That is why they failed so soon on me!
That completely threw off my alignment. I tried to get an alignment, but an alignment shop game me some BS about my warn tires and tried to forcefully sell me $800 worth of stock size 225 series new tires from them. I said I didn't have that kind of money. They replied just put it on your credit card and pay them off in installments. I replied, "F-ck Off! and left pissed." Drove the eagle RS-A's until they are bald on the toe in from being so bad out of alignment. Started looking on craigslist for some good condition 245 series tires. After 3 weeks of searching I finally came across my Falken Ziex tires for $200, up in Westchester. Drove up saw they were practically new with about 85% tread left bought them and drove them back."
The alignment shop game me the heads up that I need a new driver side wheel bearing and my inner tie rod ends were still good, but a little worn and probably should change them around the time I feel I need my next alignment.
Now with the alignment and great meats on the car it handles like it never did before (i know it handles like a FWD boat, but I never felt this car with good tires, so to me it feels like a corvette right now! :P)
The only issue I need to figure out is why the steering wheel violently rocks left and right when braking to a stop above 25MPH. I am guessing it is because of the bad wheel bearing, but I have a feeling my CV axles are popping ever so slightly!
So far that is my story and I am sticking to it!
Originally Posted by buickman104
