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The first step in our quest for performance would be some wider rubber. Our stock G came with 215/55-17 all weather Goodyear tires on 17×7″ wheels. This was a pretty small tire for a sporty mid size sedan. To upgrade our rubber we had to get some wider wheels. We wanted a conservative fitment as we did not want to have a tire / wheel combo prone to pothole damage or curb rash. Rubbing is not to be tolerated either as we often carry passengers so no stretched out hella flush for this car. For our daily driver we didn’t want to shell out big bucks for exotic forged or hard to clean wheels with an elaborate spoke design. However we did not want heavy wheels either.
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| The Rays Engineering AVS wheel is a sweet looking piece that matches the lines of the G35 well. |
We obtained a 19×8 Rays AVS wheel with a 30mm offset from our friends at Mackin Industries. These wheels feature a sleek, lightweight at 21 lbs, 5 spoke design that gives the car a light look. The wheels are high pressure die cast, although not as good as forging, high pressure cast provides a stronger wheel with less internal flaws and better grain flow and control than regular gravity casting as used on typical cast wheels. The wheels are made with Rays famous OEM levels of quality as well. We got our wheels in gunmetal grey which matched our silver car well. To read MotoIQ’s look at Rays engineering and quality, click here!
Tires are one of the most important links in the handling chain so we definitely had to upgrade our worn all season radials. Since we like the Nitto NT01 race tire a lot, we chose its street going sister, the Nitto NT05 Ultra high performance street tire for our project car. The Nitto NT05 is the end product of several years of intensive R&D testing, burning rubber at several proving grounds and three different racetracks including the famed Nurburgring. Nitto’s testing focused on balancing the ultimate in dry handling performance with long tread life.
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| Nitto finally has a world class ultra high performance tire in the NT05. The aggressive tread pattern helps evacuate water and we think it has something to do with this tire’s low road noise. |
A big part of the R&D testing for the NT05 involved dialing in the composition of the NT05’s unique tread compound. The compound developed for the NT05 uses a lot of silica and a special blend of polymer additives to create a flexible and resilient tread material that is very good at conforming to micro irregularities in the road surface. This tread compound works exceptionally well in both wet and dry conditions and is a big step forward in grip capability when compared to the long wear biased compound used in older Nitto tires.
