New 18" 124 and Michelin Pilot Sport PS 2s

[Adumbration]

I've been running my new 18" 124 wheels with Michelin Pilot Sport PSs for a couple of weeks now. I'm very impressed with the way the car feels on the road. I didn't expect such a big improvement, but boy, the handling feels a lot better.

I was running 17" wheels with All Seasons. Certainly traction is up with my new tires, but my guess is that the improvement in way the car feels on the road is due to simply moving to 18" wheels. Love it!

Bought the tires and TPM sensors from tirerack :thumbup: Thanks for the help along the way, Gary :thumbup:

Bought the wheels from BMW $$$ (couldn't find an aftermarket version with the right offsets).

Found an installer via tirerack's installer guide :thumbup: I had the tires installed at Tru Line in Seattle. Great people to work with; highly recommend them :thumbup:

Buying the 124 wheels was something of a chore. I read somewhere a while ago that the xi 5-series models have a different offset than non-xi's, so when I asked my SA to order the wheels, I specifically mentioned the fact that I believed the offsets were different. He told me I was wrong and the offsets were all the same and he was ready to order the wheels. We went back and forth, and I had to send him a link to a web page which spelled out the fact that the offsets were different. My guess is that if I didn't know better, I'd be driving around with wheels with the wrong offset. Time for a new SA :thumbdwn:

[Orient330iNYC]

I've been running my new 18" 124 wheels with Michelin Pilot Sport PSs for a couple of weeks now. I'm very impressed with the way the car feels on the road. I didn't expect such a big improvement, but boy, the handling feels a lot better.

I was running 17" wheels with All Seasons. Certainly traction is up with my new tires, but my guess is that the improvement in way the car feels on the road is due to simply moving to 18" wheels. Love it!

Bought the tires and TPM sensors from tirerack :thumbup: Thanks for the help along the way, Gary :thumbup:

Bought the wheels from BMW $$$ (couldn't find an aftermarket version with the right offsets).

Found an installer via tirerack's installer guide :thumbup: I had the tires installed at Tru Line in Seattle. Great people to work with; highly recommend them :thumbup:

Buying the 124 wheels was something of a chore. I read somewhere a while ago that the xi 5-series models have a different offset than non-xi's, so when I asked my SA to order the wheels, I specifically mentioned the fact that I believed the offsets were different. He told me I was wrong and the offsets were all the same and he was ready to order the wheels. We went back and forth, and I had to send him a link to a web page which spelled out the fact that the offsets were different. My guess is that if I didn't know better, I'd be driving around with wheels with the wrong offset. Time for a new SA :thumbdwn:

wow, huge offset difference... i was surprised when i looked it up.

530xi is ET 43/55 F/R
530i is ET 20/32 F/R

you would probably have been rubbing quite badly... the track of the car would have been increased by almost two inches total front and rear.

for parts, i recommend evan and jason at tischer bmw. their mail order prices, even shipped, blow away any local dealers here in NYC.

[Adumbration]

Thanks for the tischer recommendation.

I'm just disappointed that, not only is a dealership more expensive, but thus far I have not been at all impressed with their service. I wouldn't mind paying more if it meant that I could trust them to do the right thing, and thus, I could sit back and spend my time on other things instead of having to learn about the details of each thing I need done to my car.

But so far my SA has been pretty horrible. This is the same SA that quoted me $450 for the iPod interface, I made an appointment to have it installed, and then when I showed up for the installation, he told me they sold my part to someone else, and I would have to reschedule. Ok, so then I rescheduled, but then he quoted me $711. When I asked him why the price suddenly went up, he said he didn't know what I was talking about.