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.
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Must be a members only part of the forum since It won't let me see it. Also while I would like to go 215's I'm leaning towards one of the 205's
ReplyDeleteThese are things we don't have to decide on now but things that we should think about before we purchase tires.
ReplyDeleteAlso you probably should just join the a-body forum, gives you more things to be able to search through and some other interesting projects.