Yesterday of course was Veterans' Day, a.k.a. Armistice Day. It
being a holiday for me I took the opportunity (besides giving thanks
for those who have and still do put their lives on the line for all
of us) to take the GT6 over to a wheel specialy shop here in town.
They measured and hemmed and hawed and said the one I thought was the
worst offender was slightly out of round. How the machine measured
the inside where the tire sits I have no idea, but I had measured the
tire as showing about 0.1" runout, and they said the wheel was
0.044", where the spec (presumably for a generic wheel) was 0.01".
Okay, one could see the manufacturing imperfections in the wheel
where the thickness of the bead varied around the rim, but the
outside of the bead seemed pretty stable. Anyway, they wanted to
straighten it but it was too small for the smallest mounting bracket
on their machine! Instead, they match-balanced three of the wheels,
which means turning the tire on the wheel so the tire's and wheel's
high spots are on opposite sides. Then they put the worst offender
on the rear. The weights required ended up being waaaaay less than
they had had before. They charged me only $54. Today I drove the
car to work. Wow! It was so smooth I called them up and
complimented them. It feels like a great highway car again.
While I was waiting a guy brought in a hugh wheel, actually 19" and
seemed nearly that wide, all silvery but scratched where he'd scraped
a curb. They told me it was a stock Infiniti wheel, that fixing the
finish would be $250 but a new one would have cost him $1100!
I finally got a BMW Z4 roadster. This past weekend (one week early)
my wife threw a surprise 60th birthday party for me. One of the
presents was the Z4. It has no back seat to speak of. No useful
front seat either because the whole car is only about 7" long. Oh,
and I have to put it together myself. Don't know why the giver
thought a Z4 would be appropriate, but his toys are a '55 and '56
Olds, the '56 a convertible. You can't argue with a sense of taste
like that!
Life is good. Now if only the stock market would stop falling so I
can retire sooner than five years after I'm dead...
--
Jim Muller
jimmuller@rcn.com
'80 Spitfire, '70 GT6+
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