Thursday, December 31, 2009
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Tire Choices
I posted a build thread for our car over on the A-body.net forum
After informing us we picked the wrong engine for our car, the conversation drifted off to talking about tires. It seems the general thought there is that we stick with the 14" rims since they are lighter and go to a wider lower profile tire. By lowering the profile we can lower the car which improves handling and also give the car a bit more pick up and improve breaking. The down side is it would slightly lower top speed (I really doubt we would ever hit the theoretical top speed of the car), and the speedometer would end up being off which really isn't a big deal.
The default is 185 75 14, the ones we were looking at were 205 70 14, the ones that the a-body were suggesting were 205 60 14 or 215 60 14. Anything with lower profiles ended up being racing tires.
So here are the sidewall heights of the various tires
Tire size ----- Sidewall(mm) ------- Sidewall(in)
185 75 14 ----- 138.75 ---------------- 5.46
205 70 14 ----- 143.5 ----------------- 5.63
205 60 14 ----- 123 ------------------ 4.84
215 60 14 ----- 129 ------------------- 5.08
We also have to figure out how wide we want the tires. While we can go out to 215 on our rims, the width will add rolling resistance and eventually hurt the cars pickup, also in snow or rain wider tires have less force to go down to the ground making it harder to make contact. So more to think about.
After informing us we picked the wrong engine for our car, the conversation drifted off to talking about tires. It seems the general thought there is that we stick with the 14" rims since they are lighter and go to a wider lower profile tire. By lowering the profile we can lower the car which improves handling and also give the car a bit more pick up and improve breaking. The down side is it would slightly lower top speed (I really doubt we would ever hit the theoretical top speed of the car), and the speedometer would end up being off which really isn't a big deal.
The default is 185 75 14, the ones we were looking at were 205 70 14, the ones that the a-body were suggesting were 205 60 14 or 215 60 14. Anything with lower profiles ended up being racing tires.
So here are the sidewall heights of the various tires
Tire size ----- Sidewall(mm) ------- Sidewall(in)
185 75 14 ----- 138.75 ---------------- 5.46
205 70 14 ----- 143.5 ----------------- 5.63
205 60 14 ----- 123 ------------------ 4.84
215 60 14 ----- 129 ------------------- 5.08
We also have to figure out how wide we want the tires. While we can go out to 215 on our rims, the width will add rolling resistance and eventually hurt the cars pickup, also in snow or rain wider tires have less force to go down to the ground making it harder to make contact. So more to think about.
Monday, December 7, 2009
More pics
Here are a couple more pics from sunday
Why is Duffy taking a nap on the engine? He said because it was warm from when we had run it a few hours earlier.
Or maybe he was trying to remove the Temperature Sensor
Can't see the sensor? Look for the green wire and follow it down the the sensor, there you can see him trying to remove it, maybe. I was there and saw it happen, and I can barely see it.
Although this last picture I believe shows signs of the work being finished for this year.
Stupid Winter
Why is Duffy taking a nap on the engine? He said because it was warm from when we had run it a few hours earlier.
Or maybe he was trying to remove the Temperature Sensor
Can't see the sensor? Look for the green wire and follow it down the the sensor, there you can see him trying to remove it, maybe. I was there and saw it happen, and I can barely see it.
Although this last picture I believe shows signs of the work being finished for this year.
Stupid Winter
Sunday, December 6, 2009
Working in the Cold Picture Gallery
They say that a picture is worth 1,000 words, so here is about 10,000 words worth of pictures;
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
5% Discount Code: