2 Questions for your collective wisdom

First:
I have been noticing some strange wear on my front tires, particularly the driver front. Looking at the pictures from when I bought them (they were on a friend's corolla for a negligible amount of time, and he sold me the wheels and tires) I notice the same wear,, and I assume it may be from a rubbing issue he had with them? (He never said anything about them rubbing, so I don't think they were, but it looks like rubbing damage.)
They are definitely not rubbing on my car unless over bumps (unsure how to check rub during bump steer, but I checked full lock both directions and can fit my hand in the space thats left, at all points where the tire could possibly come in contact with the suspension/steering/fenders/anything)
To clarify: original equipment was a set of 15x6 or 6.5 steelies with 195 65 15 terrible all seasons
new equipment consists of 17x7 raze r74 wheels with 235 40 17 ultra radial gt hpr whatevers that are made by goodyear
offset is nearly the same (i think +45 oe and +42 now)
tread is wearing perfectly across the tire so I'm pretty much eliminating alignment issues unless you say otherwise..
here are some pictures of the weird wear pattern, and some shots of the car because I love it. LOL

Second question:
How much time should I expect to lose in the 1/8th mile due to increasing wheel diameter by 2", and how much should I reasonably expect to gain back due to having a 40mm wider tire with a more aggressive, performance oriented tread pattern?
Thank you, looking forward to what you all have to say about this
edit: images aren't working for me for some reason so here are links. the weird wear is right at the top of the sidewall, "feathering" looking, not on the tread itself really. there was another image but it got lost in the interwebs somehow. Thank you.

edit again: thank you, tom, it worked that time.

looks like normal wear, what is the odd pattern you're talking about?

as for how much time you'll lose in the 1/8th, it depends on torque and the setup of the car and about a thousand other things. unless you were traction limited before, you won't gain much back with the more aggressive tire

Not much help on your question because I can't see the whole tread face, but if you use the "direct link" option from ImageShack and paste the URL into the little camera icon popup, your pictures should be visible.

I'd do it, but I don't have an ImageShack account.

not on the tread itself but kind of a feathering right where the tread meets the sidewall.
it can be seen in the picture above as sort of flat and dull-ish looking spots, all around the circumference the actual wear of the tread is perfect, just the weird feathering at the top of the sidewall that's bothering me.
Thinking after consulting coworkers that it may be due to hard cornering because that is where I'd assume the greatest amount of weight is when you turn "too fast", which I may or may not be guilty of
my car is basically stock, I removed the "clutch delay valve" spring from the slave cylinder, Got a bigger diameter exhaust so I have probably a little less low end and a little more top end, and I have a k&n air filter Kia Forte 2.0 is rated 156hp SAE with I think 143ish tq stock, who knows what now but I would assume about the same. I'm not very practiced at drag racing, last time I ran I was running pretty steadily around 10.5 seconds, as I was the time before. I was wheel hopping very badly before (and it's a slick strip, not the best for street tires), but launches on abandoned back streets lead me to believe the wheel hopping is a lot more under control now with better and wider tires. So I have no suspension modifications, it is a pretty much stock fwd 4 cylinder with maybe 150 hp to the wheels, it weighs about 2700 lbs; is there a way to figure up how much time I should expect to lose, and then how much I can gain based solely on the tire diameter, not even accounting the better grip the new tires afford? if I stand to lose a substantial amount of time, I may put the stockers back on the front just for sunday at work
thank you, hope I cleared up a little bit of it at least.
and I did the direct link thing and it still didn't work, will try to edit again after I post this. Thanks

rubbing tends to put grooves into tyres.. and removes plastic/undercoating, and paint from wheel wells. If you are not getting any of that.. it is probably understeer causing your sidewalls to roll under

rolling over. It might need more tire pressure

forgot to post that too, tires inflated to 32psi cold and kept there religulously because that's what I thiought originally too. Would damage from rubbing (if it rubbed on his car because it definitely isn't rubbing on mine) continue after the issue was fixed?

If damage from rubbing wont continue after the issue is fixed (ie rubbing is not what caused the damage) then I definitely need to look at a rear bar and coilovers. any other cheapish tricks to reduce understeer? it takes a lot to make this car understeer but I've gotten it a few times when driving "spiritedly"
Thank you all for helping me out, btw

Is the feathering happening on both sides?

Had a similar issue on a Town car recently, it was an alignment issue, too much toe or caster can cause the problem.....for that matter how much spirited driving are you doing because that can definitely cause the feathering.

Hmm. I can't really see it in the photo, but from your description, I'd suspect alignment before rub. Mine really do rub, and most of the marks on mine from that are the little cuts & grooves that mad_machine was talking about. And aussiesmg is right, hooning around on tires with good tread can feather out the individual tread blocks.

john99 enjoy "paddle sports". It might be that he has a canoe, but I suspect he's just friends with Max Mosley.

aussiesmg wrote: Is the feathering happening on both sides? Had a similar issue on a Town car recently, it was an alignment issue, too much toe or caster can cause the problem.....for that matter how much spirited driving are you doing because that can definitely cause the feathering.

Yeah I had an outer edge tread block issue myself. If memory serves it is called cupping. Adjusted toe and it was fixed.

For your second question, in a straight line you probably want to look at this: tire calculator

Your wheel size has nothing to do with final gear ratio, it is your overall rolling tire circumference. If you want to try to calculate something, your losses can be assumed linear, but you need 2 known points to extrapolate your third point with a level of confidence. You could look at a HP conversion an then use linear approximation to give you an idea, but it won't be accurate due to multiple variables (Use an equation like (OE .125 et/OE tirecircumference*new tire circumference=new .125 et) With the exception of the auto-cross course your wider section width and tread pattern will only exaggerate any losses you have acquired. This could be offset by a loss of weight in the wheel & tire package.

Are these lighter than your older set? A rough and fairly accurate reference is 1 lb lost in rotating mass is the equivalent of 3 lbs of static mass.

On a completely different note, they do look good on your car.

FWIW here is a neat set of calculators

I've had a bad wheel bearing cause pretty severe cupping.

Are you sure that is not just a mold thing, where the tread meets the sidewall ?

by mold you mean from the factory I'm guessing, and not a fungus? and I'm pretty sure wheels bearings are out of the question, no noises to indicate it and the car has 31k miles on it now.
I'm not sure how much the stock steelies weighed but supposedly the new 17's weigh 21lbs/wheel
@FlightService thank you, I'm very happy with how they look on the car=]
and the feathering IS on both front tires, to a greater extent on the driver's side. I haven't seen anything of the like on the rears, which would lead to believe it'd be steering/alignment based if it is a problem with the car.. As for the spirited driving, I drive between 70 and 100 miles a day, most of it filled with back roads, so I take turns spiritedly quite a lot during my daily commute LOL
I believe my next step will be to go to precision tune to get a free alignment check. If my alignment IS off then I will just buy the eibach lowering springs (and save for the sma coilovers.) The eibachs can come with camber adjustment pieces.
Don't feel like getting all the stuff together I'd need to do a string alignment so I guess I'll be paying someone to do a front end alignment too lol
hope this is just a side effect of my spirited driving, I'm okay with buying new tires every couple years (if they even last that long) if thats the cause.
Thank you all, again, for your ideas, opinions, diagnoses, and help in general; it is very much appreciated.
I will update this after sunday with how much of a difference it made on my et from the last two times I went.

added about 3/10 to what I used to run, but the bigger, better tires helped out my consistency a lot. I dialed in at 10.8 (used to run 10.5) and ran 10.8xx all day pretty much, except for when i let off the clutch a little too quick and spun all of first LOL
I did get a .003 reaction time, so I won there at least, and I still won two rounds of the brackets and made it to the final 8