We had a pretty bad storm here today! Look at all this lightning!

Jstas · July 2003

HA HA! FOOLED YOU!

PoweredByDodge · July 2003

image doesn't show up ya dummy!!!!

Jstas · July 2003

Works for me! May take a little while to load on dialup.

PoweredByDodge · July 2003

ig ot it now...

ya... lotta lightning... har de har har...

i like the striped ones... ever think about throwing a strip down the middle of yours? only bad thing about the stripe is it draws so much attention to the vehicle and says "HI STEAL ME!" ... i've always had a love affair with stripes tho ..

Jstas · July 2003

It'd be really expensive on mine. I have a hard tonneau cover that's painted body color. Since I don't do things half-assed, that stripe(s) would have to go from the bottom of the front bumper, all the way up the hood, over the roof, down the bed cover, down the tailgate and possibly down the rear bumper.

What I want to do is take my set of 16 x 8 inch factory steelies, mount a set of white letter tires on them, get chrom Ford center caps and 16 inc trim rings and make rally wheels for it. It'd be cheaper than trying to replace the F1's every year.

PoweredByDodge · July 2003

Originally posted by Jstas
What I want to do is take my set of 16 x 8 inch factory steelies, mount a set of white letter tires on them, get chrom Ford center caps and 16 inc trim rings and make rally wheels for it. It'd be cheaper than trying to replace the F1's every year.

replace your F1's ? i take it F1's are your chrome rims? why do you have to replace them every year??

or do u mean just during the winter for the annual "snow festival" that lasts 6 months...?

far as that goes - i completely agree with you - center caps and trim rings are a great way to get "almost rim quality" look out of a basic wheel for winter use.

for an even pimp-er look, you can have your wheels repainted (35 bucks each usually - thats what they charged me) in body color, and then put the chrome trim rings and center caps on them... THAT would be sharp!

Jstas · July 2003

Uh...

F1's are Goodyear Eagle F1's in a 295/45/18 size and they run 1 grand for a set.

Center caps and trim rings aren't wheels though. They are dress ups and you can get the rally wheel look. Rally wheels are just steelies with hub caps and trim rings. They don't try to look like something else, they are a style all thier own.

On top of that I'm not going to spend 35 bucks to get a paint shop to paint wheels when for 10 bucks worth of Krylon, sandpaper and masking tape, I can do it myself.

and what you just described here:

for an even pimp-er look, you can have your wheels repainted (35 bucks each usually - thats what they charged me) in body color, and then put the chrome trim rings and center caps on them... THAT would be sharp!

IS a rally wheel!

PoweredByDodge · July 2003

i'm a little confused... the tire thing i understand.

but ...

1- why do u have to replace the high perf tires every year? are they just really soft and go bad quick? shouldn't you get at least 30 thousand bare **** minimum miles out of a tire(roughly 2 yrs worth of motoring)?

2- why revert to 16's instead of just finding a tire that'll hold up better? u had to shell out a good buck to get 18's if it came with 16's.

notice my absolutely bare **** lacking knowledge of the Lightning F150 showing here...

Jstas · July 2003

Because Goodyears suck **** on wear qualities. That's why! 30K mile tires that your lucky to get 20K miles out of. Most guys are replacing them everyth 12-15,000 miles. I can eek 2 yrs. out of them with using snow tires in the winter but by the time teh F1's are ready to be replaced, they are dangerously bald.

The truck comes with 18x9.5 inch wheels. No snow tires comes in a size any larger than 16 inch so I got 16 x 8 inch steelies and snow tires. Also, it's incrdibly difficult and expensive to find someone to stamp out a set of 17 or 18 inch steelies with at least an 8 inch width. Nobody wants to tool up to do 1 set of wheels. Even if you get it done, good luck getting the center caps and trim rings.

The 16 inch wheels would have a cheaper tire. I could probably end up getting Futura SuperSports at 60 bucks a pop for them. I wouldn't care if I boiled those off! They are cheap and look decent and probably return better mileage both on the tire and in fuel economy. Not that I'm looking for that. The benefit to a 16 inch tire too is less noise and more compliant ride while sacrifing a small amount of performance at the very edge of its capabilities.

There are not other 295/45/18 tires that hold up better though. BFGoodrich had one but they don't make it anymore. Nittos suck bad and nobody likes them. The only other ones that I know of is Kumho and Toyo which are both impossible to get because they don't make tires in the capacity that Goodyear or BFG could.

PoweredByDodge · July 2003

ooooooooooooooooooohhh

if u drop down to 16's look at the bridgestone dueler H/L's ... while i'm no big fan of bridgestone, i got stuck with them when i bought the truck, and have been utterly shocked with their ride quality, smoothness, and durability -- with blizzak snow tires only in the back in the winter, i'm going on nearly 40 thousand miles with these tires and still lookin at another 10 to 15 after that before they're "bad".

the tire pattern is something akin to a "wanna be" high perf tire, but i was glad to hear it's not a "Wanna be" pattern, it was actually set up as such for highway driving and ride quality.

$95 bucks at tirerack / raised white letter... 60 thousand mile treadware warranty... 30 day "test drive - u dont like em we buy em back" warranty ... 5 yr workmanship/materials warranty.

http://www.tirerack.com/tires/tires.jsp?tireMake=Bridgestone&tireModel=Dueler+H%2FL&vehicleSearch=true&partnum=475SR6HL683OWL&fromCompare1=yes

Jstas · July 2003

Problem with that. The duelers are SR rated which means that they will only handle 110-115 MPH. That is a little too low. The truck will hit 100 from 60 very quickly. It'd be too easy to exceed the speed rating of those tires.

The Futura Super Sports are U or H speed rated which means 120-15 for U or 125-130 for H and that is alot more head room.

Also, at 95 bucks a pop for the Dueler HT's, they still aren't cheap. tire Rack has them for 95, that means that locally, I could get them for 110-120. Futura Super Sports are 60 bucks. Half the price of the Duelers. Also, buying tires and getting someone to mount them is next to impossible here anymore. Everybody wants you to buy tires from them because mounting tires you bought some place else would be a liability. So I may save a few bucks on the tires by buying from Tire Rack but I'll get raped on mounting and balancing, that's IF I could find a shop to do the work.

PoweredByDodge · July 2003

do you really NEED to exceed 110 mph ? lol

and i did over 130 in michelin XLE's with half their tread worn off --- the first 2 days of truck ownership were bliss -- then they took my turbo charger away

bastids

nothin like goin down a 3 lane 45mph road that's like a main city boulevard thing.. at 130 and knowing you've buried the needle, the only thin gu have to help u gauge your speed is one of those little trailers hitched to the back of a police bronco that says "the speed limit is 45... your current speed is _______ " --- thankfully there was no cop in the bronco -- they tend to just leave those things on the road for a day or two to deter speeders, yet there's never a cop actually there.

now i can barely get the SOB near 115 - 120 (where the needle pins 'full' ) ... and to think i still had just a little more "go juice" at 130 -- i really need that turbo back. thats complete contrast to the caddy that just runs out of "go juice" around 100... anything over 95 depends on wind conditions... if its all good, 105 is about what i'd call "Redline" for the speed... engine just will not put out anymore power after that.

sntnsupermen131 · July 2003

man it must suck where you live if you get charged a lot for mounting tires...
about a year ago i took my truck and 4 new(er) in the bed to a garage near by
they switched everything out, mounted 5 tires, balanced 4 of them for like $40
and getting only 12k miles is crazy...is that b/c of the weight of the rim or what?
my truck only does 100...f***ing govenor...
and pbd...of course you need to go faster than 110...its a lightning...lol
-Cody

Jstas · July 2003

Passing gear drops from the OD 4th gear to 3rd and it hits the sweet spot of the powerband. If you are moving slow enough, the trans will kick all the way down to 2nd. It'll do 50-55 when it shifts out of 1st, runs 2nd al the way up to 75-80 and then shifts out of 2nd then third shifts at about 110-115 with 4th running all the way up to the 149 mph govornor. But 4th will only hit 3 grand when it hits teh limiter. Some people have pulled the limiter and have seen 160 mph.

Once you punch it at like 55-60, it downshifts to 3rd and if you didn't get on it all the way, runs like a freight train until it hammers into 4th at about 115. Not that I run it out that far but the 50-70 jump goes by in like 3-4 seconds which is frickin quick. Gettin on on ramps, I have to remember to take my foot out of it because by the time I reach the end of most on-ramps, I'm running up on 85 mph. 0-60 in about 5.0-5.2 seconds, 0-100 in about 13.0-13.5 depending on conditions. Most people will see 106-110 in the 1/4 mile at roughly 13.6-13.8 seconds, stock. So it's real easy to hit 100+ without realizing it. It doesn't even feel like 100+. You don't start to get that speed tunnel-vision thing happening until you pass 130 mph, then the trees start to blur and guardrail posts look like a picket fence.

As far as tire wear, every Goodyear I have ever owned or saw has never lived up to it's treadwear warranty. But the problem with the Eagle F1's is that they are a compound tread with a soft-compound to start and a harder compound as the tire wears down. When slinging 4600-4700 pounds of truck that is motivated by 450+ pound feet of torque and ~400 horses, rubber doesn't stand much of a chance.

We had a pretty bad storm here today! Look at all this lightning!

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