Rally Tires!

I've wanted rally tires for a while, but there are a couple things that have prevented me from getting them. First is the cost. Rally specific gravel tires run for about a $200 each, just for the tires and they only make them in a few sizes, mainly only for 15" wheels. The brakes on the WRX are not ridiculous, but not all 16" wheels fit on them, so finding 15" wheels that fit is even harder. They sell rally specific wheels that fit with no modification to the brakes for about $200 each. So you're looking at about $1600 for a set of new rally wheels and tires, ouch.

Luckily I know a couple people who stage rally and have slightly used sets of tires just lying around. Heath Nunnemacher set me up with a set of barely used Hankook gravel tires he had. They have plenty of tread left on them and they were even cut for use in looser terrain. But they are for 15" wheels. So a trip to the local junk yard turned up some 15" alloy wheels off an outback. I took them home and of course they didn't fit, I was prepared for that, but they really didn't fit. I was willing the grind a little bit off my brake calipers, but I didn't know how much I could grind off, so I didn't want to go very deep. Luckily one of my friends had some 15" steel wheels on her Legacy that fit a little better, so I traded her the alloys for her steelies straight up with me covering the remounting and balancing. After grinding a little bit of unnecessary metal off the calipers and making custom spacers, they finally fit and spun over my brakes! By now it's 11:30 at night before the rallycross that I wanted them for, just in time. The clearance between the brakes and the rim was next to nothing, we'll see what happens in the stamp sand.

Then I rattle canned them bright green for good measure.

Costs:

Tires: Free!

Alloy wheels: $120

Mounting gravel tires: $60

Mounting tires from steelies to alloy's: $60

Spay paint: $4

Total: $244

Total to get a new set of snow tires instead: $380 (not including wheels)