Okay folks, I had a very weird situation today. While discussing some performance tire upgrades for my car, a local avid autocrosser/road racer recommended to me to run a wider tire up front and a thinner tire in the rear? He suggested to go with 245/40/17 up front with 225/45/17 in the rear. Reason is, the EVO tends to understeer and this setup yielded him better times and more netural control. When asked if this will effect the AWD setup, he said the difference is so little, it didnt matter. I was wondering what you folks think?

Thanks!

Alfred

 

I know that such setups are used by a few Time Attack cars in Japan.

Not sure if that's such a good idea to do it over time though, as it may do damage to the AWD system.

Just my 2 cents, I'm sure people with more knowledge about this stuff will tell you the rest.

 

I thought it did, but stagger setup from what I heard didn't hurt the diff's at all or the awd system.

But really, I can't be so sure, since this is from a guy that I don't know but he does auto-x.

 

I never heard of that before with the tires. I just went with a stiffer sway bar in the rear.

 

Just get a rear sway bar and quaifie diff and you'll never have a problem with understeer (with decent tires).

 

Ya. I would get the sway bar long before I started messing with tire width like that. You never know how it could affect the awd.

 

I saw this recently in a tuner mag, testing a tuner tuned car and they were doing something like 17x10 rims in front and 17x9 rims rear, so I would imagine this theory is productive (if I recall the car was setup for road-course application).

edit: actually 17x9 front, 17x8 rear -- using same tires in this application @ 245/45 17...ImportTuner July 2005