S18 RSG

My initial thought was actually Corvette Z06, but yeah, similar to both:

I couldn't comment on lighter wheels, but the ride felt noticeably more compliant when I went to heavier, wider 18's, but I also had a tyre change too which may have contributed. Despite that, I can't imagine the ride quality is that much worse, just as mine wasn't that much better.

I'm not sure if anyone has used this site, but it's a good source for gathering reviews from a wider audience. Reading these ratings was a big reason why I initially tried the Vredesteins on a previous car, might be an informative read for some people. I'll link the results of the main tyres mentioned in this thread, in order of review score (best to worst according to this site): Vredestein Ultrac Vorti - http://www.tyrereviews.co.uk/Tyre/Vredestein/Ultrac-Vorti.htm Yoko V105 - http://www.tyrereviews.co.uk/Tyre/Yokohama/Advan-Sport-V105.htm Goodyear Eagle F1 - http://www.tyrereviews.co.uk/Tyre/Goodyear/Eagle-F1-Asymmetric.htm Kumho KU39 - http://www.tyrereviews.co.uk/Tyre/Kumho/Ecsta-KU39.htm ContiSport 5 - http://www.tyrereviews.co.uk/Tyre/Continental/Sport-Contact-5.htm

Mine also passed its first MOT with a secondary decat. The manifold cat seems to do more for emissions than the secondary, as I don't know of anyone who's failed with the stock manifold in place, but plenty of people who've failed with a decat manifold and secondary cat in place. With no cats you would absolutely fail emissions, so you either need a friendly MOT tester, or a cat to swap in come MOT time.

I just looked up the weight of these. The 17x7.5's weigh the same as my wheels, except mine are 18x8.5, and mine aren't exactly considered light (around 9.7kg each). That's nuts.

While true, a worse ride is a lot more than a "slight downside" for daily driven cars. I would take a better ride over fractionally better braking or acceleration for a daily driver any day. You're seeing the advantages of lightweight wheels (sharper response, hard braking and hard in gear acceleration) in less than 5% of your driven mileage on the street, but the advantages of a more comfortable ride are seen in 100% of the mileage you do.

Yeah, I would assume going up in size would balance that out. For the most part, people who go lightweight stick at 17" on these cars, so by comparison to the stock wheels, the acceleration from standstill may be slightly worse (assuming the same tyres/conditions of course), but maybe not to the extent in that test. It's all a compromise anyway. The disadvantages are obvious when it comes to going heavier and bigger in the wheel, but the advantages are pretty clear too. A larger wheel results in a lower profile tyre, therefore less flex in the sidewall. Also, most people who go to 18" go to 8" wide or upwards, which means wider tyres (I know, there are wider 17" wheels, just generalising), and wider tyres results in more lateral grip, better braking etc. so it's just about finding the balance.

Popular opinion from people doing the testing (who were equally surprised it has to be said) is that lightweight wheels are more prone to spin, as they have less resistance to the turning force. Heavy wheels are more resistive, meaning they don't spin and just grip. Remember, this is just what I'm reading from other sites/tests, not my own testing and/or opinion.

You're right, there are cheaper strong wheels, I did say there are some exceptions to the rule What people need to remember however, is that some people buy wheels because of how they look, rather than buying light wheels for the sake of having light wheels. I'm sure there are some people who search "What are the lightest 17" wheels" when searching for new wheels, whereas another crowd just look through catalogues/websites until they find something they like the look of. For those people, weight isn't everything. If you want to read the tests, just google search "lightweight wheel test", there are plenty of them. I read 3 random ones off the first page, so I'm sure there are plenty more to dig through.

Almost every test done on lightweight wheels vs heavy wheels have the same (or very similar) results, so there are a bunch of facts out there to help with this discussion. Heavier wheels show consistently better acceleration from a standing start (upwards of half a second faster 0-60 on heavy wheels in the 3 tests I read) but consistently worse lap times (between 2 and 3 seconds slower over a 2 minute lap). All other tests (braking, in gear acceleration, comfort etc.) showed very slight advantages in favour of light wheels, but not really enough to make the results too relevant (100-0mph braking was a 0.1-0.3 seconds difference, 30-70mph in gear acceleration around 0.2 seconds also). If you're a keen, competitive track driver, lightweight wheels are a proven advantage. If you daily drive your car, sure, the car may feel slightly more nimble, but that comes at a price. As has been discussed, with the exception of a few, most strong lightweight wheels are forged, and therefore expensive. A cheap lightweight wheel will have the same advantages, but on harsh, potholed British roads, may have issues with build quality. For a road car, the extra money required for a strong lightweight wheel, is possibly more usefully spent elsewhere (better tyres, brakes etc.), but for a track car, there's no arguing that lightweight wheels are the way to go.

Well, I can give some insight on the Vredesteins, which came out middle of the pack in that test. As shown in the test, dry grip is great, and I can confirm that. They feel great in the dry. I have to really try to get the back end out. Wet grip is nowhere near as bad as the tests show either. I had Uniroyal Rainsports for a while on my other car, and they were basically the opposite of these. They were meant for wet roads, but were still decent in the dry, and I would say the same for the Vredesteins (just obviously switch dry with wet). Where they have always impressed me however is how quiet they are, and their durability. In excess of 20k miles for the rear tyres on the Porsche, which is similar to the Bridgestone Potenza's it came with, except unlike the Bridgestones, they actually grip. Price wise, they came in about £100 cheaper than Conti's/Pilot Sport 3's for 225/40/18, so I imagine a similar saving at 17" too.

Only if it's nude. Do it properly or not at all.

Rimstyle is a terrible site to use to find out if wheels fit or not. The site says my wheels don't fit too. I think they look at centre bore size too (and forget that things called spigot rings exist). Best to just research wheels on other sites, even if you eventually use Rimstyle to buy them.

Just remember, if you're going to use your donkey for timing, tether it down. Don't be this guy:

Dad? Why are you using the name Andrew Smith?

No, if I come into power you can tether a donkey to your car. Currently you are required to tether your suction mounted equipment to a donkey.

I didn't want to come across as a little flippant (ok, maybe a little), but I've had 10 years experience of car forums, and on each one there's been at least 1 person with deeper pockets than the rest, who tried to make out their word as gospel just because the sum of parts on their car was greater than others'. Just annoys me, so I've been conditioned to stand up for the poor. I'm not sure this has come across, but I'm not even defending my own build here. I personally have probably spent well in excess of £1500 on different suspension setups for this car, so I feel I have a good understanding of the lower end of the market, hence my reasoning for defending Tein products (considering I have tried half of their range). Plus, there are enough serious drivers on this forum using Tein coilovers that I'm sure if there was proof that their setup was outclassed by something at the same price point, they would swap them out, but everyone seems to have settled with them, and for good reason.

If I ever come into power, tethering suction mounted equipment will be the first rule I will change. The more people I see flying off tracks into cornfields and hitting donkeys, I can only assume the better my life will become (providing life is a cartoon, and therefore the driver and his/her car remains undamaged of course)

I don't hit bumps at speed, I care more about looking after my car than proving how good my suspension is. However, I'm not going to bother structuring a reasonable reply to the rest of your post, for three reasons: 1. You spent 5 times more than me on suspension, so of course not only is your setup is 5 times better than mine, but your opinion is 5 times more valid. My apologies. 2. Judging by your last paragraph, you've obviously tried both options, so I can't really argue with that, as I haven't (I was just giving my opinion, like everyone else). 3. If you reply again, you're going to have to type " You cant have your cake and eat it" again, and I just can't hear more stories about cake today. Let's do this again sometime

Well, today I learned something. Taking all that into consideration, goes to show how little bump travel actually matters in comparison to everything else, when you think that even the cheapest Tein coilovers have more than 20mm less bump travel, and are still more compliant over bumps than stock. Makes me wonder why we even discussed it The funny thing is, we've spent the entire day discussing suspension options in a £25,000 sports car, and thanks to continually missing the original point, we're still no closer to a conclusion

Yeah, I can see what you mean. From experience of using the Street Advance compared to the Flex A, over normal street driving there's very little difference, although I do have mine set up quite hard, and to be honest, I avoid potholes and/or large bumps in the road wherever possible, so maybe I just never got to test the difference properly.

Do they? I'm sure I remember seeing something about Tein coilovers being height adjustable without adjusting damper stroke length. Was something I noticed when buying the Flex A's.

I had chance to test the Street Advance coilovers at some length when my car had it's suspension issues. They felt every bit as comfortable as my Flex A's, with 95% of the performance on the road. In terms of price, there's a few hundred pounds difference between the Flex A's and Street Advance units. In terms of difference of features, the Street advance have fixed upper mounts (no camber adjustment) and slightly different rear dampers, other than that, I think they're pretty similar, and given the price difference, I wouldn't be surprised if they were VERY similar, as those features would reasonably fill that price gap. I certainly wouldn't dismiss them as not being "decent", they're at very least decent.

I don't mean to be rude, but all that graph does is show the difference between a Koni damper (which has not been mentioned) and an unspecified Flex damper (of which there are many to choose from) on a car that isn't a GT86. I remind you, the discussion was initially comparing the benefits of a proven coilover kit with the theoretical performance of a well respected shock absorber upgrade by itself. That graph compares two dampers, neither of which are part of this discussion and neither of which are for this car. I'm sure if there was a test similar to the one you showed, but comparing a Bilstein shock to a Tein coilover on a GT86, then this conversation would have taken a slightly different path, but because no such thing exists as far as I'm aware, all we can do is speculate and compare opinions. I had a quick browse through some google search results comparing these two options, and most people seem to suggest the Tein coilovers over Bilstein shocks/spring combo, but as these results vary across BMW, MX5 and Honda owners clubs (among others), I didn't really feel it relevant enough to mention until now, but I guess when in Rome.

I don't really know how the headunits work with regards to memory, so this is just going purely off an idea of what could be wrong. Maybe, the head unit has some form of RAM associated with external devices, and when it recognised the device it associated the track list in its memory with that device, as well as reading the new track list, meaning that it combined the two lists therefore duplicating a load of them. If it were me, I would wipe the USB stick, plug it back in to the car when it's empty, then load the songs back on. Hopefully, the head unit will clear it's cache and associate nothing with the device, effectively clearing the buffered list and only reading what's on the stick. Hopefully this makes as much sense typed out as it makes in my head.