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In Reply to: New 1996 Owner Seeks Advice posted by Paul on October 08, 2000 at 16:05:58:
Hello,
I am the new owner of a 1996 Z3 1.9 automatic, and I was very happy to discover the discussion board. I wanted to introduce myself, and solicit some advice.
The car is blast to drive, and once some of its neglected needs have been attended to I should be good to go for many miles. It needs some maintenance work (brakes, a new rear window, there's a leak in the front engine seal), but the one big-ticket item I need to take care of right away is tires.
Right now in the front it's got Michelin Pilot (HX?) 255/50R16s and something else (Road Hugger GTOs? 255/55R16) in the back. All four are worn down about 75%, and the car has about 57k miles, so I figure these could be the original factory tires, though I'm not certain about the back ones.
I just drove the car in the rain for the first time today, and as you might expect, the lack of traction control in this model means that even with the not-so-torquey 1.9 there's a disconcertingly pronounced tendency to tail-wag without a very delicate touch on the throttle. Whether this will always be the case or is exaggerated by the tire wear I'm not sure.
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Welcome Paul,
I'd say that the rear twitch problem is definitely one of tire wear. The fact that the 1.9 is 'not so torquey' makes it less twitchy in general than the more powerful Z3s. Especially with the automatic.
With the original Michelin Pilots (the originals had a Z speed rating by the way) the 1.9 almost has too much tire for it's power and weight. It's also probably the best handling of the Z3s. The bigger engines come with the tradeoff of more weight and the 1.9 has a better front-rear weight balance.
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