New Winter Tires and an alignment!

This week I got a set of winter tires for the miata. After much research, I decided to go with Continental Wintercontact SIs for my shoes. Even though I had  a budget set aside for tires.. I've totally blown it as I forgot to include the price of the rims. On top of that, the tire shop charges a fee for installation and balancing, another set of lug nuts and hub centric rings. And there's also a tire disposal fee collected by the provincial government. Ah..... Still, I do want to run my car in winter, so there's that. 

The new tires are much quieter than the Pilot Sport AS3, but I kind of miss the road whine that the AS3s had - they gave me the impression of a supercharger lol. That whine is now gone, and its not missed - the ride is now a bit more refined. The rims, Core Racing 16x6.5 Impulses, were basically the cheapest rims that were of similar weight to the stock alloys. Thinking about it now, these rims are really quite heavy - the stock 17in alloys are about 17 pounds; these 16 inch rims come in at 18 pounds (supposedly - that's what Kal Tire told me, I could not find specs on the web). The WinterContact SI tires are definitely lighter than the AS3s - they're not runflats, and are 205/55R16 vs 225/45R17 for the AS3.

One other thing, the black rim/tire against the white/red car felt like black pools of dense gravity. I felt there needed to be some kind of colour to make the tire pop, so I got a red tire paint pen and picked out some of the text. To clean the tire, I scrubbed it with some steel wool and cleaned the surface with some waterless spray cleaner. After painting the letters, I let it set overnight, then covered it with 303 Aerospace Protectant. It's only day 2, so I'll see how long this lasts! 

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Earlier today though, I took it to Aria Auto Services to get some scheduled maintenance done. Did the suggestions in the owner's manual: Engine oil, oil filter, transmission fluid, differential fluid. The power steering fluid was grimy, and the brake fluid had 1% worth of water, so both were changed as well. For the brake fluid, I got some fancy ATE 200 brake fluid that has a higher boiling point as I intend to autocross my miata later this year. It's unlikely my brakes will overheat as a newbie, but I do want to take the best care of my car.

Most of the fluids were replaced with Motul oils, but the transmission fluid I requested for Ford Motorcraft XT-M5-QS. I'm very, very surprised by how good the shifter feels now, I thought it was already pretty solid, but the Ford fluid almost removed the shifter's snickety-snick feel, and shifting into 2nd is oh so smooth now.

After the fluids were done, the guys at the shop then did an alignment of the wheels to bring it back to stock. I can't say the alignment was uber awesome or anything - I drive pretty conservatively in the city and it is unlikely an alignment would be felt. Even so, I wanted to be sure the angles were all in the ballpark.

All in all, the changes to the fluid have miraculously improved my fuel mileage - I didn't see much of a change with the new tires, but the new fluids have bumped my winter fuel mileage to about 12l/100km. I'll be running up the Sea To Sky tomorrow, and I'll see what that brings, but when summer comes around, I think I'll be selling those AS3 tires for some Continental ExtremeContact Sport tires* :)

Zoom zoom!

* In the running: General Tires G-Max RS