New wheels

[andres.pena1122]

I saw these 17s with a fellow local member's car and so they really caught my attention. He had the car on the market and I did a deal to acquire the wheels off him for £375 including tyres.

I have ordered a new number of tyres (Proxes T1Rs all round) for the reason that rears are down to the wear bars as well as the fronts are really old as well as despite having decent tread are pretty manky combined with rears being too high some sort of profile.

They may polarise opinion somewhat and I admit i always am not 100% myself as I prefer originality in reality. The original Griffiths came out from the factory with very similar wheels albeit within a smaller size. They don't appear to have upset the ride but they have crisped up the handling a great deal and they make it easier to get decent tyres as it is getting increasingly difficult (and expensive) to obtain decent rated tyres in 15 inches fronts!

I may end up keeping them for track days as i don't want to risk destroying my (increasingly hard to replace) original factory OZ Imola wheels (which We still have).

[Flyair]

Andres

On the way to perfection in originality one doesn't have to become a maniac .

I am somewhat more relaxed as far as current cars or even youngtimers are concerned. We have discussed at length the question around consumable items in our vintage Pagodas, such as batteries, bulbs or even tyres, and more importantly security belts. I feel that there is nothing wrong in using modern adequate parts in the consumable area. I wonder how many Pagoda owners use the "correct" tyres (I guess the only one (hardly) available are the Michelins, which anyway were used in Europe only). I bet that less than 5% of them. Also, some purist would even consider the Fuchs alloy wheels as not adequate for Pagodas, even though they were proposed as an option by Mercedes themselves.

Having said that I have very mixed feelings (mostly negative) when I see a Pagoda "on steroids" although I respect the choice of the owner.

In the case of your car, the wheels look absolutely great and this is what matters

[Garry]

Andres,

Are you talking about them being on your Pagoda, and if so do you have a photo to share of that?