SCWells72

Nice to see you got them off the delivery truck and on the car!!

Looks great, thanks again.

 

Very nice done.

 

Yeah, the delivery guy and I had a good laugh about it when all was said and done. He'd been driving around central TX with them for a week! Regardless, thanks for the great deal, Steve.

 

Okay, I guess I've been on the new wheels for a little over a week...long enough for a "long term" impression.

I'm exceptionally happy with the wheels. In the spirit of complete honesty, I have to say that they do create a firmer ride that some would consider harsh, and there is a little more road noise, particularly over textured road surfaces. However, neither the harshness nor the noise is a dramatic change from the 17"s with Z-rated tires...just an incremental difference. And those changes were completely expected with the move to a larger wheel. The car drives incredibly well, though. It's increasingly perplexing to me each time I do an L-Tuned mod to the car that Lexus doesn't offer at least some small number of vehicles configured this way off the assembly line as a factory sport package. Here's hoping for the next-gen GS...

Not only do the wheels fill the wheel wells much better than the 17"s in diameter, but because of their width they are also very nearly flush with the sides of the car. The 17"s always sat "inside" the wheel wells in just about every way possible. Even though there's only a 1" change in diameter, the visual change (as many of your have pointed out in this thread) is much more dramatic than you'd think.

I took the car in to John Roberts Lexus of Austin for a computer adjustment to keep the odo and speedo correct and an alignment. The dealership had to keep my car overnight because Goodyear, who performed my last alignment when I replaced my stock rubber at about 16K miles, had hammered the alignment adjustments into place when I guess they couldn't figure out how to get the alignment using "normal" measures. As a result, John Roberts' master mechanic Randy, who always works on my car, had to do a little extra work to get everything back into spec. When I picked up the car the next day, he put it back up on the lift to show me what he had to (un)do to fix Goodyear's wonderful work. So an alignment that's typically $160 at the dealer ended up costing me $350 out the door because of the extra labor. I did have them write up the problems so I can take them to Goodyear, but short of small claims court, I suspect that I won't get anything out of them.

So in summary, those of you who consider the GS with 17"s to be a little too loud or harsh already won't want to do this change. However, if you a) consider 17"s too small on the GS; b) treasure solid, flat handling with sticky rear tire grip; and c) enjoy as much of an OEM look to your car as you can get (the L-Tuned 18"s have the Lexus emblem in the center caps), you should strongly consider this upgrade the next time you're needing to change our your rubber.

Thanks for all the kind comments on the new look!

Regards,
Scott

 

I am not sure if the stock 17s are different, but going from my 16s to the L-Tuned 18s, the wheel (rim & tire)diameter was actually smaller. Especially since Lexus decided to go with the 235/265 combo. It looks bigger because the rim itself is bigger. I thought I was imagining it but I checked with the various tire calcs out there to confirm.

This point, however, is absolutely true, especially with the 9.5s in the rear.

The rest of your assessment was pretty close to mine too. I can't go back to the stockies.