Consumer Reports #1 recommendation of the 2004 Acura TL is right on target, but BEWARE if you choose to upgrade with dealer accessories. On the advice of the salesman and Acura website I decided to enhance the appearance of my TL with their upgraded wheels and tires and their ground effects and spoiler. The paint on the factory ground effects is off by two shades, which now highlights the bumpers being a bit off too, unexcusable for a 35k + upscale car. The district manager that came into town after 4 weeks decided they will correct the color differences on the ground effects as necessary. Yeah! (but recently learned it means painting because the new accessories where even further shades off, pitiful.)

The 18" factory tires and wheels are beautiful, but after only two weeks the wheels are scraped and marred. It turns out that the upgraded wheels protrude beyond the tires and make them oh so susceptible to damage.

Neither Acura nor the dealership cautioned me about this issue. One trip to a car wash scratched up the left wheel with an 8 inch scrape that removed the paint from the rim. Parking the car and barely rubbing the curb produced a 10 inch scrape on the right front wheel. My girlfriend drove my car knowing full well that these wheels are subject to damage with inconsequential curb contact so she deliberately negotiated her way through the ATM drive only to end up with more damage to the left front wheel. She doesn't care to drive the car anymore until this is resolved. After two weeks with the car the wheels were quite scratched up and I am very disappointed.

The sad part is that it doesn't have to be so stressful to drive this car with exposed and thus fragile wheels.
Acura is looking into the tire and wheel configuration concerns but does not assure a resolution. Their customer service recommended calling Yokohama with my inquiry for advice on wider tires that would protect the wheels. Yokohama recommended a 255 tire as opposed to the 235's now on there. I hope Acura will give me some credit on the 235's they sold me.
I'm confident Acura will resolve all of these "first year model issues" but until then be forewarned about issues with factory appearance and performance upgrades.
It is a shame to me that such a great vehicle is bringing me down due to the the accessories dept. missing the mark.

 

I agree, on a 8.5 in wide rim 235 is IMO undersized. For that reason I went with a 265 tire and can't be more happy.

 

Is it the tire not wrapping enough around the rim?
Or is the rim just a bit fragile when coming contact with curbs?

"Parking the car and barely rubbing the curb produced a 10 inch scrape on the right front wheel."

Could this be a human error damaging the rim?

I've installed some rims tires not OEM Enkei Bortex RPM2 18X8 .. and my tires are 235/40/18..

 

I've owned my 18" wheels for about 2 weeks now. I haven't gotten any user-inflicted scrapes or scratches on it yet, and I've parallel parked many times. If you use the tilting mirror you can be reasonably safe from scratching the rims.

If you're really afraid about damage, you should also choose tires that have rim guards. The Bridgestone Potenza RE750s have a strip of rubber on the outside that effectively make the tire wider than the rim. I have 235/40/18s.

245/40/18s would sit better on the rim -- right now, there's a little gap between where the 235 ends and where the rim ends. If your tire doesn't have a rim guard, then that could easily be why you're scraping the rims. If you get 245/40/18 Potenza RE750s your rubber guard would portrude even more, giving you additional protection.

 

You realize, of course, that going to larger tires is not neutral -- i.e. you are not just changing the size of the tires. You are also changing the handling of the car, the gear ratios and introducing speedometer error -- which may result in tickets since your speedometer is now indicating a lower speed than you are going. Of course, you are also extending the warranty on the whole car just a bit too <G>!

<TED>

 

I agree. Wider tires will give abit more curb protection. But with the TL rim 8.5" wide, the 235/45 simply isn't enough tire to prevent the rim from rubbing the curb. On my old Supra, I used to run front 235/45 and rear 255/40; rim width were front/rear: 8"/9" respectively (these two tire size suppose to give equal overall diameter size for both front and back). So I think 255/40 is ok if you worry about ABS wheel speed sensor. I like the idea posted by the other member of going to a 255/40 tire, it should provide more protection for the rim. As in comparison, my 255/40 on 9" rim was also thin as hell, the rim had numerou scratches on it. More on these rim and tires, they are really suppose to be performance after market sizes anyway, whoever buys TL should be aware they aren't suppose to hit the curb as it will eventually throws off the alignment and do subtle damages to the suspension and tire.

 

I am now seriously thinking of going with a 255/40 tire after scraping my right rim yesterday while traversing a poorling engineered enterance with a portruding curb which I did not see.

 

Apparently Acura didn't take any of their TL-S/CL-S customers advice because the Type-S wheels flaired out beyond the tire .. making curbs damaging to them. I'm glad that my 03 CL-S has the different wheel (which was only on the CL).

 

It seems to me that as long as you go by the outside diameter of the OEM tires you will be ok on this account. If you keep it close to within 1/4", that's 1/8" difference at the tread, which wears by twice that amount, you won't know the difference.

 

 

Sounds like you have a nice ride. How do you like the yoko es100's? They are on my short list to replace BS el42. Also considering Michelin pilots or Pirelli's.

 

Yes, I am aware of the difference in speed and what not -- that's why I went with the OEM suggested 235/40/18 with rim guards.

See here: http://www.discounttire.com/dtc/broc...o/tireMath.jsp

That link gives you the necessary info to determine how much outside of spec you want to go.

 

I appreciate all the different perspectives, and I may end up changing back to stock wheels. However, what will I do with the 18"s? Nonetheless, I purchased the car with the full expectation of dressing it up. Quite frankly the car without the add-ons just didn't quite do it (for me.) With the upgrades I've made, the car looks darned near "exotic."
I agree with you about driver error being the most responsible...
I also think though that a well thought out accessory upgrade need not increase the likelihood of scrapes on a car.
You mentioned "hitting" a curb and yet I only ever so gently and minor-ly rubbed one at .01 mph while parallel parking. I'd never damaged a wheel before and so I didn't know to be extraordinarily cautious while parking and such. Point being the dealer could have cautioned me about this larger potential with the bigger wheels. So that I could have from the beginning be more aware and careful as I am now.

At any rate I trust that this will all be resolved soon as the car has been at the dealer for the last week and I fully expect to work things out amicably with the Dealer. Happy TLing. =)