Hi,
I have a E46 330D SE Touring (MY2000). I've been running it on 225/45ZR17 Good Year Eagle F1 GSD3 now for about 40,000 miles but the rears needed changing as they were almost illegal, however the front tyres were fine. I decided to keep the front tyres and install 2 new tyres of the same type exactly on the rear. So thats what I did, and after driving out of the tyre shop I noticed that the car's handling had changed dramatically. The car was handling brilliant up to the tyre swap and now it's down there with the worst ever handling car I've ever had!
I thought that it might be me being oversensitive at first so I left it for a while in the hope that it would improve. I've checked the tyre pressures twice and tried the car at the low end and high end of whats acceptable based on the door sticker tyre pressure guide. I've also checked that the wheels are on tight and it's been in to a BMW specialist who cannot find any fault with it. However, the car handles like a 'boat' and feels dangerous at speed. It tramlines a lot and the rear of the car wants to steer on its own and needs constant attention and correction of the steering. Often I head over the while lines and need to pull the car over. Its really quite bad on the motorway!
Has anyone any idea what may be causing this and how I can get the fault identified and remedied ?
I am taking it back to the tyre shop hopefully today to get the tracking looked at and see if the tyres may be at fault.
Thanks for all your help
Marc