Tire Swap: Summer -> All-Season (some pics)

[theakston]

This is my first fall/winter with my Elise, and I've become so attached to driving it that I can't keep the little guy in the garage for several months until the weather gets warm enough again. I finally realized that it's only the tires that are a real problem -- I have the Yokos on, and below 40 degrees, they become plastic(y) and lose a lot of their grip. So I bought some new tires and rims, which arrived today, and I changed myself. I practiced on my Mini Cooper on Monday (I've been swapping the all-seasons for Blizzaks for the last couple of years -- love the in-snow handling), and changed the Elise's tires just a few hours ago.

Gotta say, it was considerably easier to change the wheels on the Lotus. For a start, you can jack up two wheels at a time. And unlike the Mini, the suspension did't sag once up on the jack (I sometimes think the Lotus doesn't have suspension!), so you only need to get the wheels a couple of inches free from the ground. The wheels are lighter, too -- on the Mini, an S-Lite (17" solid alloy) + a run-flat tire weighs in at 44 lbs each, what came off the Lotus only weighed 30/37 lbs (16" front/17" rear), and what I put on was 30/34 lbs.

Okay, on to the pics:

My new wheels. FedEx didn't deliver until about 5:30pm -- thought they weren't going to deliver at all -- I was stressing!



Those are Kumho Ecsta ASX rubber on TRMotorsport F1 BLK MA LP rims, from TireRack.

Chock the wheels, handbrake on, break the lugs, check for the little blue sticker (missing on mine, but find where the cross-bar meets the side bar, and you are pretty much golden), and jack:



After some wrench work, and a little careful lifting (don't want to hit the brake calipers), the wheels are on:



Here's a bit of a comparison between the all-seasons (going on), and the summers (coming off):



You can just make out the size difference between the front and rear wheels. The tires in the back-ground are the 17" all-seasons off my Mini -- and despite being the same size (in theory) as the rear Lotus wheels, they look small in comparison -- probaby because the Lotus wheels are wider???

Finally, here's a little look at the tools I used:



You can see I marked on the torque settings for both the Mini (M) and Lotus (L). My jack has just a simple metal top to it, which is fine for the Mini, as it has big rubber jack-points permanently fitted to it, but my Lotus didn't even have the bloody blue sticker. From diagrams on the 'net, I figured out the jack point, and with a little Dremmel work, I tooled a rubber furniture cup into a gentle cushion between the Lotus and the jack. Finally, the jack only just fitted under the car, and I noticed that if I wasn't careful, the jack arm/handle would touch the body-work, so I put a piece of stick-on felt onto the handle for that extra safety margin.

Hope you found this interesting and/or helpful.

If you are interested, I can let you know how the new tires fare once I've broken them in.

Anyone else going to be driving their Lotus through the off-season?

Cheers,

Mark.
:-)

[foosh]

Looks good! You're smart to switch to more suitable rubber and get some use out of the car during the winter months.

[evilfij]

I loved my first set of ASXs. The fronts I still have on with about 17k on them and they are at 70% or better. The rears lasted about 16k and I swapped them for full snows.

[30mpg]

great write up! thanks!

More shots of the garage?

[Arno]

Are the rears run-flats? Print on the tread has 'RFL' on it..

May give some 'interesting' handling if that's the case...

Bye, Arno.

[theakston]

For the price I paid (and the weight, or lack thereof), I can't imagine the tires are run-flats. My Mini all-seasons are run-flats, and cost about 4 times as much as the Lotus tires. And for some reason, the Lotus rear tires were about $4 cheaper each than the front, despite being bigger, wider, and heavier. Go figure!?

Not sure how many miles you have to drive to officially "run-in" new tires, but at about 150 miles today, I managed some serious fish-tailing, which I almost didn't get under control. Okay, so maybe I had a little too much power on pulling out and turning from my favourite diner, but I wasn't quite prepared for what it did. It's most likely my fault though -- this is my first "cold-season" with a rear-wheel drive car, and it certainly has more "go" than any other car I've driven before. Thank the driving gods I gave myself plenty of room from other cars when I was pulling out (a big break in the traffic).

[theakston]

Since 30mpg asked, and I'm pretty proud of my handiwork, here's a "before" pciture of my garage:



And here's the after:



Anyone else done anything special to their four-wheeled friends home?

CHeers,

Mark.
:-)

[goelise]

be safe this winter with your Elise. Take some pics of your car playing in the snow.

Mine's sleeping in the garage for the winter.

[theakston]

Not that I would ever go this speed ever, except on a track, but I have noticed that at between 80 and 90 mph, and with the Yokos on, I would get violent vibrations through the steering wheel. I read somewhere that that's standard on the Elise, but elsewhere someone suspected that wheels needed re-balancing. If it was balance, then wouldn't you get the vibrations across a much wider range of speeds?

Anyway, not that I've ever tried these speeds, but the new wheels-tires combo doesn't suffer any of these vibration issues (at any speed).

[swede]

I like this. I dont drive my Elise enough, maybe with all season tires like this I would do some more driving.

Nice work.