Any symptoms to suggest the cat is defective?I suspect my stock cat might be on it's last leg with the PP764s and 17/22.
Do you mean Extreme Winter Contact? If so those tires are the bomb for winter, I run them on both the golf and jetta, never had a day I could not get to or home from work regardless of the weather. They hold their traction capability much longer then the Blizzaks do, little wiggly at 85 mph on I95 but you can't have everything.Finally took my Conti DWS's off and put on my Conti Extremes. Wondering if those will be enough for winter or go for 4 snows. The DWS's were embarrassingly worn. I think I got 50K out of a set of 40K tires. No wonder they were noisy. Sure are nice on corners though.
And the General Altimax Artic's tread pattern looks the same as Nokian's. And I can attest to them being excellent. I have used them since 2007. Much less expensive thatn Nokians to.Any Winter tire is better than none, but Nokian's are supposed to be the best and my experience with them seems to back that up.
Have had Hakkapeliitta R's on the GTI for a while now, and they work great.
So I replaced my aging Michelin Arctic Alpine's with a set of Hakkapeliitta 7 studded tires last year on the TDI.
My biggest worry now is that I can stop faster than the people behind me.
Have to replace my summer tires too, and was thinking to try their eNtyre tires.
Turns out they're Conti Pro Contacts. Grand touring all season (good for nothing) tires. Where I have a set of spare wheels I think I'll buy some snows and be done with it. I drive about 30K per year and although mine's a Quattro it will be peace of mind to have real snow tires on. As far as driving 85 mph northern Maine's speed limit on I95 is 75 and everybody drives 85-95 mph cause there's never any traffic.Do you mean Extreme Winter Contact? If so those tires are the bomb for winter, I run them on both the golf and jetta, never had a day I could not get to or home from work regardless of the weather. They hold their traction capability much longer then the Blizzaks do, little wiggly at 85 mph on I95 but you can't have everything.
I have well over 30k miles on my x-ice2. I have been running them four 5 seasons I think. The last 2 years I have averaged 30k miles a year. I bought them after my first full winter with the car. Anyway, they still grip great on snow and ice.The Nokians are spendy. Most all the winter tires are great the first winter, its the 2nd and 3rd were the differences really become manifest.
From personal experience the Blizzaks and IceX were great 1st winter (8 to 9k miles), second ok (another 8 to9k miles), 3rd no better then a common snow tire (8 to 9k miles).
For me the Extreme winter contacts have been almost as good at the end as they were at the beginning. Run them for three winters and after the 3rd leave them on until june to get all the legal life from them.
Link or part number for wrench?Closed shop "early" today at 5 (yea, it's Saturday) and got some work in on my 03.
Shimmed rear axle to have toe in vs toe out. I now have the special wrench for the purpose which is well worth it. Swapped out original rears for Akebono pads and Bosch rotors despite the fact that there was about 1/4 remaining just because they were off.
Also re-balanced rear wheels, I was in a massive rush when I did them last time and one was an ounce off, the other was 3/4 ounce off.
The car behaves a little different on straight roads, but I can't say how. My 71-80 mph vibration is gone now as well, I'm pretty excited about that, but now I can hear a wind noise coming from my passengers door that I'll need to investigate otherwise ill have an OCD attack.
For those considering to special alignment wrench, I got all of this done (shimmed both sides of rear beam, changed brakes and re-balanced 2 wheels) in 1 1/2 hours. I have done the same with an assortment of wrenches, but it t was closer to 2 hours for 1 side.
Is that one old enough to pour peanut oil in and go? What addative do you use?M-B got an oil change (7 quarts Rotella 15w40) and tire rotation. Fuel filters (two) change and alignment coming soon.
I've only driven this car about 20K since purchase 3 years ago, but after replacing shocks, tires, rear brakes, filters and fluids when I purchased I've done nothing to it but oil changes. Pretty impressive for a 21 year-old Mercedes.
(snip)Radio stopped working in the Mk4 the other day. Chased through some threads here.