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A little bit of Kansas BBQ to fill us up after a great cold-weather track day. It was just BBQ, I swear—pay no attention to the sign in the background.Of course, it doesn’t hurt that, in this wonderful world of advancing tire technology, the PSAS3 is worlds beyond most of the ultra high-performance tires of just a few years ago. I’ve caught myself in awe of how well these have performed so far, and while I wouldn’t plan a full warm-weather track weekend on the PSAS3s, I also wouldn’t have done that with any of the summer-specific tires I had several years ago. I prefer to use the right tire for the right job, but even the Pilot Super Sports work about as well as some of the track-day tires from 10 years ago. With the exception of being mind-blowingly good in the rain and having a treadwear rating of 300! The rating on the PSAS3 is 500, which just increases the shock factor of their performance.
Fitment of a 9” wide wheel on an E36 chassis can’t get much better than this.
Much to my surprise, the 18” Arc-8s look right at home on an E36, even at stock ride height as pictured here. Proper tire size has a lot to do with that, however, as these PSAS3s are 245/35-18. Many people tend to strap on 235/40-18 tires, which are taller than stock diameter, and they don’t do you any favors with gearing (acceleration).
I never should’ve made a comment about planning ahead in Part 2. It turns out my old wheels spacers were just shy of giving enough room for the wider Arc-8s to have full clearance from the HVT 6100s.
I had been using my old Rogue Engineering 12mm wheel spacers (right) for so many years that it was time to order some new ones, I suppose. As cool of a design as my old ones were, these new Megalight 15mm spacers (left) take it up a notch or two.
