With 22,500 miles on the clock the Michelins were getting a bit thin so I decided to have another try at getting some bigger wheels, but what to buy? The OZ Vivace were lovely wheels but I knew they were not available in 42mm offset but perhaps other OZs would be. I liked the Supperleggera but wasn't sure about the titanium colour on a silver car and the 5 spoke OZ Cronos was also firm favourite with it's rally looks. In the end I saw a set of Fox Premier 2 in Bright Crystal finish on another car and decided they were the ones for me.
This time I went to someone who would supply and fit. South West Tyres in Clevedon got my custom this time. Despite my protestations about the 42mm offset they assured me that 38 mm was what I needed - so they got them ordered. When I went to Clevedon to get them fitted they opened them up and found that the boxes were labelled Bright Crystal but the wheels inside were Titanium finish. They just didn't look right when they put them against the car - thank goodness I hadn't chosen the Supperleggeras. They reordered and off I went to Clevedon again when they arrived - they opened the boxes before they phoned me this time. I was right - with a 38mm offset and 205 tyres they scrubbed like it was going out of fashion and they weren't available in the necessary 42mm offset. They set about finding some wheels that would fit and came up with a few - by far the best were 7jx16" League 089 GT-r that they had in stock. They looked a bit like the 6 spoke versions of the 5 spoke OZ Cronos. That would do for me.
They fitted 205x45x16 tyres first but these still scrubbed a bit so they tried 195x45x16 - that was better but the rear arches still needed a bit of work with an angle grinder to finally sort the problem. I wasn't so worried about modifying the arches now that the car wasn't fresh out of the showroom and the lips on the arches were well able to cope with a reduction of a couple of millimetres. At last a set of 16s that didn't scrub.
As soon as I got home the exposed metal on arches got a couple of couple of coats of primer followed by several coats of Lucerne Silver so that shouldn't be too much of a problem.