THE WHEEL & TYRE BIBLE

Are you confused by your car tyres, or if you're American, your tires? Don't know your
rolling radius from your radial? Then take a good long look through this page where I
hope to be able to shift some of the mystery from it all for you. At the very least, you'll be
able to sound like you know what you're talking about the next time you go to get some
new tyres.
HOW TO READ YOUR TYRE MARKINGS
This is probably the number one question I get asked - "how do I read my tyre
markings?". It's confusing isn't it? All numbers, letters, symbols, mysterious codes.
Actually, most of that information in a tyre marking is surplus to what you need to know.
So here's the important stuff:
How to read your tire markings

Key Tyre Marking Description

A Manufacturers or brand name, and commercial name or identity.
Tyre size, construction and speed rating designations. Tubeless designates a tyre
which requires no inner tube. See tyre sizes and speed ratings below. DIN-type tyre
marking also has the load index encoded in it. These go from a load index of 50
B (190kg) up to an index of 169 (5800kg).
C Denotes type of car tyre construction.
 M&S denotes a car tyre designed for mud and snow. Reinforced marking only where
D applicable.
E Pressure marking requirement.
F ECE (not EEC) type approval mark and number.
G North American Dept of Transport compliance symbols and identification numbers.
H Country of manufacture.

As well as all that, you might also find the following embossed in the rubber tyre
marking:
The temperature rating - an indicator of how well the tyre withstands heat
buildup. "A" is the highest rating; "C" is the lowest.
The traction rating - an indicator of how well the tyre is capable of stopping on
wet pavement. "AA" is the highest rating; "C" is the lowest.
The tread-wear rating - a comparative rating for the useful life of the tyre's
tread. A tyre with a tread-wear rating of 200, for example, could be expected to
last twice as long as one with a rating of 100. Tread-wear grades typically range
between 60 and 600 in 20-point increments. It is important to consider that this is
a relative indicator, and the actual life of a tyre's tread will be affected by quality
of road surfaces, type of driving, correct tyre inflation, proper wheel alignment
and other variable factors. In other words, don't think that a tread-wear rating of
100 means a 30,000 mile tyre.
Encoded in the US DOT information (G in the tyre marking above) is a two-letter code
that identifies in detail where the tyre was manufactured. In other words, what factory
and in some cases, what city it was manufactured in. It's the first two letters after the
'DOT' - in this case "FA" denoting Yokohama.
This two-letter identifier is worth knowing in case you see a tyre recall on the evening
news where they tell you a certain factory is recalling tyres. Armed with the two-letter
identifier list, you can figure out if you are affected. It's a nauseatingly long list, and I've
not put it on this page. But if you click here it will popup a separate window with just
those codes in it.

Another useful resource, which I discovered by myself is CARiD.com. Huge selection of

tires, plenty of useful videos and articles and the most accurate wheel & tire fitment
database in the industry: http://www.carid.com/tires.html You just select the year, make
and model of your vehicle, choose the right diameter, offset, backspacing, and bolt
pattern and wait for your new set of tires to arrive!
ADDITIONAL MARKINGS
In addition to all of the above, here is a comprehensive list of other markings you can
find on your sidewall.
This section is hidden by default because it takes up a lot of space on the
page. the additional markings section.
OE MANUFACTURER LETTERS
In the same way that Porsche specifies N-rated tyres (see later), there's even more
markings on the sidewall of a tyre that can denote tyres fitted as original equipment
(OE) to various makes of vehicle. In some cases, the 'preferred' OE tyres are slightly
different than the same-named tyres without the OE specification. For example on some
Honda SUVs, the tyres that are stamped with 'DZ' have a lower rolling resistance tread
pattern than those that aren't. In true "Keeping the customer confused" fashion, you'll
notice that (F) is not the same as (f). Go (f)igure. The following table shows all the
letters assigned to OE tyres for various manufacturers.
This section is hidden by default because it takes up a lot of space on the
page. the OE manufacturer letters section.
DOT CODES AND THE 6-YEAR SHELF LIFE

As part of the DOT code (G in the tyre marking above), there is a tyre manufacture date
stamped on the sidewall. Oddly this code is sometimes only one one sidewall so you
might need to get under your car and look at the inward-facing side of the tyre. Take a
look at yours - there will be a three- or four-digit code. This code denotes when the tyre
was manufactured, and as a rule-of-thumb, you should never use tyres more than 6
years old. The rubber in tyres degrades over time, irrespective of whether the tyre is
being used or not. When you get a tyre change, if you can, see if the tyre place will
allow you to inspect the new tyres first. It's not uncommon for these shops to have stuff
in stock which is more than 6 years old. The tyre might look brand new, but it will
delaminate or have some other failure within weeks of being put on a vehicle.
Reading the code. The code is pretty simple. The three-digit code was used for tyres
manufactured before 2000. So for example 1 7 6 means it was manufactured in the 17th
week of 6th year of the decade. In this case it means 1986. For tyres manufactured in
the 90's, the same code holds true but there is a little triangle after the DOT code. So for
this example, a tyre manufactured in the 17th week of 1996 would have the code 176
After 2000, the code was switched to a 4-digit code. Same rules apply, so for example 3
0 0 3means the tyre was manufactured in the 30th week of 2003.
DOT tire code

CHECK YOUR SPARE

I had a reader email me about the age code and he pointed out that it's wise to check
your spare tyre too. In his case, he had an older vehicle but his running tyres were all
nice and fresh. It was his spare that was the problem - it had a date code on it of 081
meaning it was manufactured in the 8th week of 1991. At the time of writing, that was a
16 year old tyre. So you've been warned - if you're driving an older car, check the date
code of your spare. If you get a flat and your spare is gently corroding in the boot (or
trunk), it won't do you much good at all.
DOT AGE CODE CALCULATOR
The calculation built in to this page is up-to-date based on today's date. If the DOT age
code on your tyres is older than this code, change your tyres.
DOT AGE CODE: 1410
Interesting note : in June 2005, Ford and GM admitted that tyres older than 6 years
posed a hazard and from their 2006 model year onwards, started printing warnings to
this effect in their drivers handbooks for all their vehicles.
TAKE THE AGE CODE SERIOUSLY : A TALE
OF CAUTION
A reader contacted me in 2010 with a tale of caution regarding the manufacturing age
code on old tyres.
In August 2010, I bought a classic 1976 Mercedes with only 30,000 miles on it. The
seller (who was only the second owner) warned me that he thought that the Michelin
XVS tyres were pretty old (the spare was unused). I was aware of the dangers of old
tyres from reading your tyre bible, but it was a Sunday and the tyres are an unusual
size (205/70R14) and were not readily available. I thought that I'd risk the trip back
home (250 miles), but that I'd need to get new tyres ASAP. Unfortunately, one of the
tyres didn't last that long, and failed at 70 MPH (see photo, note my skidmarks). It
turned out that the tyres were date-stamped from week 30, 1986(!), so the advice about
old tyres is indeed true!
For the record, I ordered new tyres and had the minor body damage repaired, and all is
well with the car now. Stephen W, Dublin, Ireland.
THE E-MARK

Item F in the tyre marking diagram above is the E-mark. All tyres sold in Europe after
July 1997 must carry an E-mark. The mark itself is either an upper or lower case "E"
followed by a number in a circle or rectangle, followed by a further number.
An "E" (upper case) indicates that the tyre is certified to comply with the dimensional,
performance and marking requirements of ECE regulation 30.
An "e" (lower case) indicates that the tyre is certified to comply with the dimensional,
performance and marking requirements of Directive 92/33/EEC.
The number in the circle or rectangle denotes the country code of the government that
granted the type approval. 11 is the UK. The last number outside the circle or rectangle
is the number of the type approval certificate issued for that particular tyre size and
type.
TYRE SIZE NOTATIONS
Okay, so you look at your car and discover that it is shod with a nice, but worn set of
185-65HR13's (from the tyre marking). Any tyre mechanic will tell you that he can
replace them, and he will. You'll cough up and drive away safe in the knowledge that
he's just put some more rubber on each corner of the car that has the same shamanic
symbols on it as those he took off. So what does it all mean?
tire size markings

This is the ratio of the This is the dia

height of the tyre ininches of th
This is the width in mm of sidewall, (section height), This tells you that the wheel that the
the tyre from sidewall to expressed as a tyre is a radial been designe
sidewall when it's percentage of the width. construction. Check on.Don't ask
unstressed and you're It is known as the aspect This is out tyre tyre sizes mix
looking at it head on (or ratio. In this case, 65% of thespeed construction if you and metric
top-down). This is known 185mm is 120.25mm - ratingof the want to know what measuremen
as the section width. the section height. tyre. that means. just do. Okay
More recently, there has been a move (especially in Europe) to adjust tyre designations
to conform to DIN. This is the German Institute for standardisation - Deutsches Institut
fuer Normung, often truncated to Deutsche Industrie Normal. DIN sizing means a slight
change in the way the information is presented to the following:

Section width Aspect ratio Radial Rim diameter Load index Spee
ULTRA HIGH SPEED TYRE SIZE NOTATIONS
There is a subtle difference in the notation used on ultra high speed tyres, in particular
motorcycle tyres. For the most part, the notation is the same as the DIN style described
above. The difference is in the way the speed rating is displayed. For these tyres, if the
speed rating is above 149mph, then a 'Z' must appear in the dimension part of the
notation, as well as the actual speed rating shown elsewhere. The 'Z' is a quick way to
see that the tyre is rated for over 149mph.

Section width Aspect ratio 149+ mph rated Radial Rim diameter Load index Spe
CLASSIC / VINTAGE / IMPERIAL CROSSPLY
TYRE SIZES
What ho. Fabulous morning for a ride in the Bentley. Problem is your 1955 Bentley is
running on 7.6x15 tyres. What, you ask, is 7.6x15? Well it's for older vehicles with
imperial measurements and crossply tyres. Both measurements are in inches - in this
case a 7.6inch tyre designed to fit a 15inch wheel. There is one piece of information
missing though - aspect ratio. Aspect ratios only began to be reduced at the end of the
1960s to improve cornering. Previously no aspect ratio was given on radial or crossply
tyres. For crossply tyres, the initial number is both the tread width and the sidewall
height. So in my example, 7.6x15 denotes a tyre 7.6 inches across with a sidewall
height which is also 7.6 inches. After conversion to the newer notation, this is the
equivalent to a 195/100 15. If you're plugging numbers into the tyre size calculator lower
down this page, I've included an aspect ratio value of 100 for imperial calculations.
Note: I put 195/100 15 instead of 195/100R15 because technically the "R" means radial.
If you're trying to get replacement crossply tyres, the "R" won't be in the
specification. Howeverif you're trying to replace your old crossply tyres with metric radial
bias tyres, then the sizedoes have the "R" in it. Here is a javascript calculator to turn
your imperial tyre size into a radial metric tyre size:
Your imperial tyre size: x
7.6 15

Equivalent standard tyre size is : /100 R

For quick reference, you could also try my vintage tyre size conversion table which lists
a lot of common sizes along with their modern counterparts.
classic tire sizes

CLASSIC / VINTAGE RADIAL TYRE SIZES

Remember above that I said aspect ratios only started to come into play in the 1960s?
Unlike the 100% aspect ratio for crossply tyres, for radial tyres, it's slightly different -
here an aspect ratio of 80% is be assumed. So for example, if you come across on
older tyre with 185R16 stamped on it, this describes a tyre with a tread width of 185mm
and a sidewall height which is assumed to be 80% of that; 148mm.
The question of the aspect ratio for radial sizes has been the subject of a lot of email to
me. I've had varying figures from 80% up to 85% and everyone claims they're right. Well
one reader took it to heart and did some in-depth research. It seem there is actually no
fixed standard for aspect ratio when it is not expressly stated in the tyre size. Different
manufacturers use slightly different figures.
The english MOT (road-worthiness test) manual states: Unless marked otherwise,
"standard" car tyres have a nominal aspect ratio of 82%. Some tyres have an aspect
ratio of 80%. These have "/80" included in the size part of the tyre marking e.g. 165/80
R13. Note: Tyres with aspect ratios of 80% and 82% are almost identical in size and
can be safely mixed in any configuration on a vehicle.
See http://www.motuk.co.uk/manual_410.htm for the online version.
If you're plugging vintage radial numbers into the tyre size calculator, I've included
aspect ratios of 80 and 82 for these calculations.
ALPHA NUMERIC LOAD-BASED TYRE SIZES
FOR VINTAGE CARS
Picture credit: Jensen Intercepter Club
On some 60's and 70's era vintage vehicles, (for example the Jensen Interceptor), the
tyre sizes were denoted as ER70VR15. The '70' refers to the section height as you
might expect, and the '15' is the wheel dimension, but on first inspection there appears
to be no section width. Actually there is, but it's in yet another odd format. In this case,
the first letter is the thing to look at. The letter itself has no direct equivalent to modern
dimensional sizes but instead relates to load index; the higher the letter the more load it
can carry. With vintage tyres, higher loads translated into bigger tyres, so the
close approximations between old load and new size these days are:
C = 185 D = 195 E = 205 F = 215 G = 225 H = 235 etc.
In this example then, ER70VR15 means 205/70 R15 with a 'V' speed rating. Whilst
many of the latter Interceptors were technically capable of 140mph, the aerodynamic
behaviour would have you quickly backing off to about 120mph so frankly that 'V' rating
is a little optimistic. If you're looking to replace tyres for this type of vehicle, an 'H' speed
rated tyre is the better choice, and it's cheaper.
For those of you reading this in the colonies, an example vehicle from this era is the
Chevy Nova which had E78-14 tyres. (In this case, there was no letter 'R' meaning
these were cross-ply tyres, not radials). The equivalent size in modern notation would
be 205/78 R14. The following converter will give you a rough idea of the equivalent
metric tyre size for a given alpha numeric tyre size:
Your alphanumeric tyre size: R / R
E 78 14

For quick reference, you could also try my vintage tyre size conversion table which lists
a lot of common sizes along with their modern counterparts.
METRIC TYRE SIZES AND THE BMW BLURB
Fab! You've bought a BMW 525TD. Tyres look a bit shoddy so you go to replace them.
What the....? TD230/55ZR390? What the hell does that mean? Well my friend, you've
bought a car with metric tyres. Not that there's any real difference, but certain
manufacturers experiment with different things. For a while, (mid 1990s) the 525TD
came with arguably experimental 390x180 alloy wheels. These buggers required huge
and non-conformal tyres. I'll break down that classification into chunks you can
understand with your new-found knowledge:
TD - ignore that. 230 = cross section 230mm. 55 = 55% sidewall height. Z=very high
speed rating. R390=390mm diameter wheels. These are the equivalent of about a 15.5"
wheel. There's a nice standard size for you. And you, my friend, have bought in to the
long-raging debate about those tyres. They are an odd size, 180x390. Very few
manufacturers make them now and if you've been shopping around for them, you'll
have had the odd heart-stopper at the high price. The advice from the BMWcar
magazine forum is to change the wheels to standard sized 16" so there's more choice of
tyres. 215-55R16 for example. The technical reason for the 390s apparently is that they
should run flat in the event of a puncture but that started a whole debate on their forum
and serious doubts were expressed. You've been warned...
If you're European, you'll know that there's one country bound to throw a spanner in the
works of just about anything. To assist BMW in the confusion of buyers everywhere, the
French, or more specifically Michelin have decided to go one step further out of line with
their Pax tyre system. See the section later on to do with run-flat tyres to find out how
they've decided to mark their wheels and tyres.
Metric tire sizes

LAND ROVERS AND OTHER OFF-ROAD TYRE

SIZES
On older Land Rovers (on the LWB/110 vehicles and many "off-roaders"), you'll often
find tyres with a size like 750x16. This is another weird notation which defies logic. In
this case, the 750 refers to a decimalised notation of an inch measurement. 750 = 7.50
inches, referring to the "normal inflated width" of the tyre - i.e. the external maximum
width of the inflated, unladen tyre. (This is helpfully also not necessarily the width of the
tread itself). The 16 still means 16 inch rims. Weird eh? The next question if you came
to this page looking for info on Land Rover tyres will be "What size tyre is that the
equivalent of in modern notation?". Simple. It has no aspect ratio and the original tyres
would likely be cross-ply, so from what you've learned a couple of paragraphs above,
assume 100% aspect ratio. Convert 7.5inches to be 190mm. That gives you a 190/100
R16 tyre. (You could use the calculator in the section on Classic / vintage / imperial
crossply tyre sizes above to get the same result.)
Generally speaking, the Land Rover folks reckon a 265/65R16 is a good replacement
for the "750", although the tread is slightly wider and might give some fouling problems
on full lock. It's also 5% smaller in rolling radius so your speed will over-read by about
4mph at 70mph. If you can't fit those, then the other size that is recommended by
Landrover anoraks is 235/85R16.
On Discoveries, Range Rovers, or the SWB Defenders/Series land rovers you'll find
"205" tyres, denoting 205mm x 16 inches. The 205 type tyres can generally be replaced
with 235/70R16 or 225/75R16. The 235 is a wider tyre and the general consensus in
Land Rover circles is that it holds the road better when being pushed.
If you're really into this stuff, you ought to read Tom Sheppard's Off Roader
Driving (ISBN 0953232425). It's a Land Rover publication first published in 1993 as
"The Land Rover Experience". It's been steadily revised and you can now get the
current edition from Amazon. I've even helpfully provided you with this link so you can
go straight to it....
LT (LIGHT TRUCK) IMPERIAL TYRE SIZES
Confused yet? Okay how about this: 30x9.5 R15 LT or LT30x9.5/15. Yet another mix-
and-match notation, this time for (amongst other things) light truck classification tyres.
All the information you need to figure out a standard size is in there, but in the usual
weird order. In this case the 30 refers to a 30 inch overall diamter. The 9.5 refers to a
9.5 inch wide tread. The R15 refers to a 15 inch diameter wheel. In order to figure out
the closest standard notation, you know the tread width which (in this example) is 9.5
inches or 240mm. The sidewall height is the overall height minus the wheel diameter all
divided by 2. So 30 inches minus 15 inches, which gives you 15 inches. Half that to get
7.5 inches and that's the sidewall height - 190mm. Remember the section value is a
percentage of the tread width - in this case 190mm/240mm gives us a section of 80%
(near enough). So the standard size for 30x9.5R15 works out to be 240/80R15. In truth
you can barely find a tyre that size so most off-roaders with that sort of tyre size go for
245/70R15 which is more common. For your convenience, another calculator then.
Your LT tyre size: x R
30 9.5 15

Equivalent standard tyre size is : / R

Light truck tires

PORSCHE N-RATED TYRES

Porsche designs and manufacturers some of the highest performance cars in the world
(with the exception of the butt-ugly Cayenne). All this design and performance is worth
nothing if you put cheap Korean tyres on your Porsche, and because of that prospect,
Porsche introduced the N rating or N specification system. In order for a manufacturer
to be an OE (original equipment) supplier of tyres for Porsches, they must work with the
Porsche engineers at the development and testing stage. They concentrate on supreme
dry-weather handling but they also spend a considerable amount of time working on
wet-weather handling. Porsches are typically very tail-heavy because of the position of
the engine relative to the rear wheels, and with traction control off, it's extremely easy to
spin one in the wet. Because of this, Porsche specify a set of wet-grip properties which
is way above and beyond the requirements of any other car manufacturer.
OE tyres for Porsches must successfully pass lab tests to prove that they would be
capable of adequately supporting a Porsche at top speed on a German Autobahn. Once
the lab tests are done, they must go on to track and race tests where prototypes are
evaluated by Porsche engineers for their high-speed durability, uniformity and
serviceability. If they pass all the tests, Porsche give the manufacturer the go-ahead to
put the car tyres into production and then they can proudly claim they are an N-rated
Porsche OEM (Original Equipment Modifier).
The N-ratings go from 0 (zero) to 4, marked as N-0, N-1 etc. This N-rating, stamped into
a tyre sidewall, clearly identifies these tyres as having gone through all the nauseating
R&D and testing required by Porsche as described above. The number designates the
revision of the design. So for a totally new design, the first approved version of it will be
N-0. When the design is improved in some way, it will be re-rated as an N-1. If the
design changes completely so as to become a totally new tyre, it will be re-rated at N-0.
If you've got a Porsche, then you ought to be aware that as well as using N-rated tyres,
you ought to use matching tyres all around because many Porsches have different sizes
tyres front and rear. So for example if you have a Porsche with N-3 rated tyres and the
rear ones need replacing but the model has been discontinued, you should not get N-
0's and put them on the back leaving the old N-3's on the front. You should replace all of
them with the newer-designed re-rated N-0 tyres. But then you own a Porsche so you
can certainly afford four new tyres....
One final point. You may go into a tyre warehouse and find two tyres with all identical
markings, sizes and speed ratings, but one set has an N-rating. Despite everything else
being the same, the non-N-rated tyres have not been certified for use on a Porsche. You
can buy them, and you can put them on your car, but if you stuff it into the armco at
150mph, Porsche will just look at you and with a very teutonic expression ask why you
didn't use N-rated tyres.

Porsche tires

Like the site? The page you're reading is free, but if you like what you see and feel you've
learned something, a small donation to help pay down my car loan would be appreciated.
Thank you.

LIES, DAMN LIES AND SPEED RATINGS

All tyres are rated with a speed letter. This indicates the maximum speed that the tyre
can sustain for a ten minute endurance without coming to pieces and destroying itself,
your car, the car next to you and anyone else within a suitable radius at the time.
Max Speed Capability Max Speed Capability
Speed Symbol Km/h MPH Speed Symbol Km/h MPH
L 120 75 S 180 113
M 130 81 T 190 118
N 140 87 U 200 125
P 150 95 H 210 130
Q 160 100 V 240 150
R 170 105 W 270 168
Y 300 186
ZR 240+ 150+
'H' rated tyres are the most commonplace and widely used tyres, having replaced 'S'
and 'T' ratings. Percentage-wise, the current split is something like this: S/T=37%,
H=63%, V=8%. Certain performance cars come with 'V' or 'ZR' rated tyres as standard.
This is good because it matches the performance capability of the car, but bad because
you need to re-mortgage your house to buy a new set of tyres.
A note on the ZR rating: most speed ratings designate the speed that should not be
exceeded. For example W-rated tyres are rated up to 270km/h. ZR-rated tyres, by
comparison, are theoretically rated for anything over 240km/h. This is why the Bugatti
Veyron was shod with ZR-rated tyres for the world record speed run of 431km/h when
Top Gear drove it at the VW Ehra-Lessien test track. Although to be honest, at that
speed the tyres only lasted for 8 minutes.
UTQG RATINGS
The UTQG - Uniform Tyre Quality Grade - test is required of all dry-weather tyres
("snow" tyres are exempt) before they may be sold in the United States. This is a rather
simple-minded test that produces three index numbers : Tread life, Traction and
Temperature.
The tread life index measures the relative tread life of the tyre compared to a
"government reference". An index of 100 is equivalent to an estimated tread life
of 30,000 miles of highway driving.
The traction test is a measure of wet braking performance of a new tyre.
There is no minimum stopping distance, therefore a grade "C" tyre can be very
poor in the wet.
The temperature test is run at high speeds and high ambient temperatures
until the tyre fails. To achieve a minimum grade of "C" the tyre must safely run at
85mph for 30 minutes, higher grades are indicative of surviving higher speeds (a
rating of "B" is, for some reason, roughly equivalent to a European "S" rating, a
rating of "A" is equivalent to an "H" rating.)
There are some exceptions: Yokohama A008's are temperature rated "C" yet are sold
as "H" speed rated tyres. These UTQC tests should be used only as a rough guide for
stopping. If you drive in the snow, seriously consider a pair of (if not four) "Snow Tyres".
Like life, this tyre test is entirely subjective.
LOAD INDICES
The load index on a tyre is a numerical code associated with the maximum load the tyre
can carry. These are generally valid for speed under 210km/h (130mph). Once you get
above these speeds, the load-carrying capacity of the tyre decreases and you're in
highly technical territory the likes of which I'm not going into on this page. (Mostly
because I don't understand it).
The table below gives you most of the Load Index (LI) values you're likely to come
across. For the sake of simplicity, if you know your car weighs 2 tons - 2000kg - then
assume an even weight on each wheel. 4 wheels at 2000kg = 500kg per wheel. This is
a load index of 84. The engineer in you should add 10% or more for safety's sake. For
this example, I'd probably add 20% for a weight capacity of 600kg - a load index of 90.
Generally speaking, the average car tyre is going to have a much higher load index than
you'd ever need. It's better to have something that will fail at speeds and stress levels
you physically can't achieve, than have something that will fail if you nudge over 60mph
with a six pack in the trunk.
LI kg LI kg LI kg LI kg LI kg LI kg
50 190 70 335 90 600 110 1060 130 1900 150 3350
51 195 71 345 91 615 111 1090 131 1950 151 3450
52 200 72 355 92 630 112 1120 132 2000 152 3550
53 206 73 365 93 650 113 1150 133 2060 153 3650
54 212 74 375 94 670 114 1180 134 2120 154 3750
55 218 75 387 95 690 115 1215 135 2180 155 3875
56 224 76 400 96 710 116 1250 136 2240 156 4000
57 230 77 412 97 730 117 1285 137 2300 157 4125
58 236 78 425 98 750 118 1320 138 2360 158 4250
59 243 79 437 99 775 119 1360 139 2430 159 4375
60 250 80 450 100 800 120 1400 140 2500 160 4500
61 257 81 462 101 825 121 1450 141 2575 161 4625
62 265 82 475 102 850 122 1500 142 2650 162 4750
63 272 83 487 103 875 123 1550 143 2725 163 4875
64 280 84 500 104 900 124 1600 144 2800 164 5000
65 290 85 515 105 925 125 1650 145 2900 165 5150
66 300 86 530 106 950 126 1700 146 3000 166 5300
67 307 87 545 107 975 127 1750 147 3075 167 5450
68 315 88 560 108 1000 128 1800 148 3150 168 5600
69 325 89 580 109 1030 129 1850 149 3250 169 5800

A WORD ON "GUARANTEED" TYRES

When I moved to America, I noticed a lot of car tyre shops offering tyres with x,000 mile
guarantees. It's not unusual to see 60,000 mile guarantees on tyres. It amazed me that
anyone would be foolish enough to put a guarantee on a consumable product given that
the life of the tyre is entirely dependent on the suspension geometry of the car it is being
used on, the style of driving, the types of road, and the weather. Yet many
manufacturers and dealers offer an unconditional* guarantee. There's the catch though.
The '*' after the word "unconditional" takes you elsewhere on their information flyer, to
the conditions attached to the unconditional guarantee. If you want to claim on that
guarantee, typically you'll have to prove the tyres were inflated to the correct pressure
all the time, prove they were rotated every 3000 miles, prove the suspension geometry
of your car has always been 100%, prove you never drove over 80mph, prove you
never left them parked in the baking hot sun or freezing cold ice, and prove you never
drove on the freeways.
Wording in the guarantee will be similar to this:
"used in normal service on the vehicle on which they were originally fitted and in
accordance with the maintenance recommendations and safety warnings contained in
the attached owner's manual"

and

"The tyres have been rotated and inspected by a participating (tyre brand) tyre retailer
every 7,500 miles, and the attached Mounting and Rotation Service Record has been
fully completed and signed"

There will typically also be a long list of what isn't covered. For example:

Road hazard injury (e.g., a cut, snag, bruise, impact damage, or puncture), incorrect
mounting of the tire, tire/wheel imbalance, or improper repair, misapplication, improper
maintenance, racing, underinflation, overinflation or other abuse, uneven or rapid wear
which is caused by mechanical irregularity in the vehicle such as wheel misalignment,
accident, fire, chemical corrosion, tire alteration, or vandalism, ozone or exposure to
weather.

Given that you really can't prove any of this, the guarantee is, therefore, worthless
because it is left wide open to interpretation by the dealer and/or manufacturer. For a
good example, check out the Michelin warranty or guarantee (pages 3 to 7): (PDF). I
used to link directly to the document on their website but it wandered around all over the
place making it difficult to find (wonder why?) So now a copy is hosted here.

Don't be taken in by this - it's a sales ploy and nothing more. Nobody - not even the
manufacturers - can guarantee that their tyre won't de-laminate or catch a puncture the
moment you leave the tyre shop. Buy your tyres based on reviews, recommendations,
previous experience and the recommendation of friends. Do not buy one simply
because of the guarantee.

BIG-CHAIN DEALERS VS. MANUFACTURER WARRANTIES.

A reader pointed out to me that the dealer he worked for honoured tyre warranties in a
no-fuss manner requiring simply the original receipt for when they were purchased and
one small form to be filled out. They then typically used a pro-rated refund applied to the
new tyre. For example if someone paid $100 for a tyre guaranteed for 60,000 miles and
it was dead after 40,000, pro-rata the customer had 34% of the warranty mileage left in
the tyre. They would either refund $34 (34% of $100) or apply it against the cost of a
replacement. I suspect this no-fuss attitude is down to buying power. Large chain stores
like CostCo or Sears will have far more clout with the manufacturers than you or I with
our 4 tyres. After all they buy bulk in he hundreds if not thousands. For the consumer, it
makes them look good because you get a fair trade. They can argue the toss with the
manufacturers later, leveraging their position as a bulk buyer in the market to get the
guarantees honoured.
CAR TYRE TYPES

There are several different types of car tyre that you, the humble consumer, can buy for
your car. What you choose depends on how you use your car, where you live, how you
like the ride of your car and a variety of other factors. The different classifications are as
follows, and some representative examples are shown in the image on the right.
Performance tyres or summer tyres
Performance tyres are designed for faster cars or for people who prefer to drive harder
than the average consumer. They typically put performance and grip ahead of longevity
by using a softer rubber compound. Tread block design is normally biased towards
outright grip rather than the ability to pump water out of the way on a wet road. The
extreme example of performance tyres are "slicks" used in motor racing, so-called
because they have no tread at all.
All-round or all-season tyres
These tyres are what you'll typically find on every production car that comes out of a
factory. They're designed to be a compromise between grip, performance, longevity,
noise and wet-weather safety. For increased tyre life, they are made with a harder
rubber compound, which sacrifices outright grip and cornering performance. For 90% of
the world's drivers, this isn't an issue. The tread block design is normally a compromise
between quiet running and water dispersion - the tyre should not be too noisy in normal
use but should work fairly well in downpours and on wet roads. All-season tyres are
neither excellent dry-weather, nor excellent wet-weather tyres, but are, at best, a
compromise.
Wet-weather tyres
Rather than use an even harder rubber compound than all-season tyres, wet weather
tyres actually use a softer compound than performance tyres. The rubber needs to heat
up quicker in cold or wet conditions and needs to have as much mechanical grip as
possible. They'll normally also have a lot more siping to try to disperse water from the
contact patch. Aquachannel tyres are a subset of winter or wet-weather tyres and I have
a little section on them further down the page.
Snow & mud or ice : special winter tyres
Winter tyres come at the other end of the spectrum to performance tyres, obviously.
They're designed to work well in wintery conditions with snow and ice on the roads.
Winter tyres typically have larger, and thus noiser tread block patterns. In extreme
climates, true snow tyres have tiny metal studs fabricated into the tread for biting into
the snow and ice. The downside of this is that they are incredibly noisy on dry roads and
wear out both the tyre and the road surface extremely quickly if driven in the dry. Mud &
snow tyres typically either have 'M&S' stamped on the tyre sidewall. Snow & Ice tyres
have a snowflake symbol.
All-terrain tyres
All-terrain tyres are typically used on SUVs and light trucks. They are larger tyres with
stiffer sidewalls and bigger tread block patterns. The larger tread block means the tyres
are very noisy on normal roads but grip loose sand and dirt very well when you take the
car or truck off-road. As well as the noise, the larger tread block pattern means less tyre
surface in contact with the road. The rubber compound used in these tyres is normally
middle-of-the-road - neither soft nor hard.
Mud tyres
At the extreme end of the all-terrain tyre classification are mud tyres. These have
massive, super-chunky tread blocks and really shouldn't ever be driven anywhere other
than loose mud and dirt. The tread sometimes doesn't even come in blocks any more
but looks more like paddles built in to the tyre carcass.

TYRE CONSTRUCTIONS
Simply put, if you bought a car in the last 20 years or so, you should be riding on radial
tyres. If you're not, then it's a small miracle you're still alive to be reading this. Radial
tyres wear much better and have a far greater rigidity for when cars are cornering and
the tyres are deforming.

Cross-ply components Radial components

The tread consists of specially compounded/vulcanised rubber which can have unique
characteristics ranging from wear resistance, cut resistance, heat resistance, low rolling
resistance, or any combination of these. The purpose of the tread is to transmit the forces
between the rest of the tyre and the ground.

The sidewall is a protective rubber coating on the outer sides of the tyre. It is designed to
resist cutting, scuffing, weather checking, and cracking.

The chafer of a radial tyre acts as a

The chafer protects the bead and body from
chafing (wear from rubbing) where the tyre is
in contact with the rim.
reinforcement. It increases the overall
stiffness of the bead area, which in turn
restricts deflection and deformation and
increases the durability of the bead area. It
also assists the bead in transforming the
torque forces from the rim to the radial ply.

The liner is an integral part of all tubeless pneumatic tyres. It covers the inside of the tyre
from bead to bead and prevents the air from escaping through the tyre.

The bead of a cross-ply tyre consists of bundles of bronze coated high tensile strength steel
wire strands which are insulated with rubber. A cross-ply tyre designed for off-road use
typically has two or three bundles. A radial on-road tyre normally only has one. The bead is
considered the foundation of the tyre. It anchors the bead on the rim.

The cord body is also known as the tyre
carcass. It consists of layers of nylon plies.
The cord body confines the pressure, which
supports the tyre load and absorbs shocks
encountered during driving. Each cord in
each ply is completely surrounded by
The body ply of a radial tyre is made up of a
single layer of steel cord wire. The wire runs
from bead to bead laterally to the direction of
motion (hence the term "radial plies"). The
body ply is a primary component restricting
the pressure which ultimately carries the
 resilient rubber. These cords run diagonally load. The body ply also transmits the forces
to the direction of motion and transmit the (torque, torsion, etc.) from the belts to the
forces from the tread down to the bead. bead and eventually to the rim.

The belts are layers of steel cord wires

The breakers are also know as belts. They
provide protection for the cord body from
cutting. They also increase tread stability
which resists cutting. Breakers can be made
of nylon, aralon, or steel wire.
located between the tread and the body ply.
Off-road tyres can have up to five belts.
Road tyres typically have one or two. The
steel wire of the belts run diagonally to the
direction of motion. The belts increase the
rigidity of the tread which increases the cut
resistance of the tyre. They also transmit the
torque forces to the radial ply and restrict
tyre growth which prevents cutting, cut
growth and cracking.

COMPARISON OF RADIAL VS. CROSS-PLY PERFORMANCE

This little table gives you some idea of the advantages and disadvantages of the two
types of tyre construction. You can see the primary reasons why radial tyres are almost
used on almost all the world's passenger vehicles now, including their resistance to
tearing and cutting in the tread, as well as the better overall performance and fuel
economy.

Cross-ply Radial
Vehicle Steadiness
Cut Resistance - Tread
Cut Resistance - Sidewall
Repairability
Self Cleaning
Traction
Heat Resistance
Wear Resistance
Flotation
Fuel Economy
A SUBSET OF TYRE CONSTRUCTION : TYRE
TREAD
You thought tread was the shape of the rubber blocks around the outside of your tyre
didn't you? Well it is, but it's also so much more. The proper choice of tread design for a
specific application can mean the difference between a comfortable, quiet ride, and a
piss poor excuse for a tyre that leaves you feeling exhausted whenever you get out of
your car.
A proper tread design improves traction, improves handling and increases Durability. It
also has a direct effect on ride comfort, noise level and fuel efficiency. Believe it or not,
each part of the tread of your tyre has a different name, and a different function and
effect on the overall tyre. Your tyres might not have all these features, but here's a
rundown of what they look like, what they're called and why the tyre manufacturers
spend millions each year fiddling with all this stuff.

Sipes are the small, slit-like grooves in the tread blocks that allow the blocks to flex.
This added flexibility increases traction by creating an additional biting edge. Sipes are
especially helpful on ice, light snow and loose dirt.
Grooves create voids for better water channeling on wet road surfaces (like the
Aquachannel tyres below). Grooves are the most efficient way of channeling water from
in front of the tyres to behind it. By designing grooves circumferentially, water has less
distance to be channeled.
Blocks are the segments that make up the majority of a tyre's tread. Their primary
function is to provide traction.
Ribs are the straight-lined row of blocks that create a circumferential contact "band."
Dimples are the indentations in the tread, normally towards the outer edge of the tyre.
They improve cooling.
Shoulders provide continuous contact with the road while maneuvering. The shoulders
wrap slightly over the inner and outer sidewall of a tyre.
The Void Ratio is the amount of open space in the tread. A low void ratio means a tyre
has more rubber is in contact with the road. A high void ratio increases the ability to
drain water. Sports, dry-weather and high performance tyres have a low void ratio for
grip and traction. Wet-weather and snow tyres have high void ratios.

TREAD PATTERNS

There are hundreds if not thousands of car tyre tread patterns available. The actual
pattern itself is a mix of functionality and aesthetics. Companies
like Yokohamaspecialise in high performance tyres with good-looking tread patterns.
Believe it or not, the look of the pattern is very important. People want to be safe with
their new tyres, but there's a vanity element to them too. For example, in the following
comparison, which would you prefer to have on your car?

The thought process you're going through whilst looking at those two tyres is an
example of the sort of thing the tyre manufacturers are interested in. Sometimes they
have focus groups and public show-and-tells for new designs to gauge public reaction.
For example, given the choice, I'd prefer the tread pattern on the right. The challenge for
the manufacturers is to make functionally safe tyres without making them look like a
random assortment of rubber that's just been glued to a wheel in a random fashion.
In amongst all this, there are three basic types of tread pattern that the manufacturers
can choose to go with:

Symmetrical: consistent across the tyre's face. Both halves of the treadface are the
same design.

Asymmetrical: the tread pattern changes across the face of the tyre. These designs
normally incorporates larger tread blocks on the outer portion for increased stability
during cornering. The smaller inner blocks and greater use of grooves help to disperse
water and heat. Asymmetrical tyres tend to also be unidirectional tyres.

Unidirectional: designed to rotate in only one direction, these tyres enhance straight-
line acceleration by reducing rolling resistance. They also provide shorter stopping
distance. Symmetrical unidirectional tyres can be placed on either side of the vehicle, so
the information on the sidewall will always include a rotational direction arrow. Make
sure the tyres rotate in this direction or you'll get into all sorts of trouble. Asymmetrical
unidirectional tyres must be dedicated to a specific side of the vehicle. The sidewall
markings will indicate which side is 'out' and the correct direction of rotation.

TREAD DEPTH AND TREAD WEAR

INDICATORS
For the most part, motoring law in most countries determines that your tyres need a
minimum tread depth to be legal. This varies from country to country but is normally
around 1.6mm. To assist you in figuring out when you're getting close to that value,
most tyres have tread wear indicators built into them. If you look around the tread
carefully, at some point you'll see a bar of rubber which goes across the tread and isn't
part of the regular pattern (see the picture here for an example). This is the wear
indicator. It's really basic, but it's also pretty foolproof. The tread wear indicator is
moulded into the rubber at a depth of about 2mm normally. As the rubber in your tyres
wears away due to everyday use, the tread wears down. At some point, the tyre tread
will become flush with the wear indicator (which is normally recessed into the tread). At
this point you have about 2mm of tread left - in other words it is time to change tyres.

MINIMUM LEGAL TREAD DEPTH DOES NOT

MEAN "SAFE".

Actually it's wise to change your tyres before you get to the wear indicator, as by this
point, the effectiveness of the tyre in the wet is pretty limited, and its grip in the dry won't
be as sharp as it was when new. In 2006, Auto Express magazine in the UK did some
pretty rigorous testing on "legal" tyres. They are campaigning to have the legal minimum
in England increased from 1.6mm up to 3mm. Their reasons are backed up by testing :
at 1.6mm, despite still being perfectly legal, the stopping distance is increased by 40%
in the wet over tyres that have 3mm of tread left. They performed the test using the
same car, under the same conditions with the same driver. The only thing that changed
was the tyres. The Fifth Gear TV program performed a graphic demonstration of the
problem by equipping two cars with different tyres. The lead car had 3mm of tread left,
the trailing car had 1.6mm. The cars were driven at 50mph at a distance of 3 car lengths
apart - not safe, but representative of the real-world. When the lead driver performed an
emergency stop, the trailing driver reacted nearly instantly, but despite years of training
and an ABS-equipped car, he slammed into the lead vehicle still doing 35mph.

Picture credit: Channel 5 / Fifth Gear

I've sliced up the video into a short clip so you can see what happened. Download the
cliphere. You'll need the DiVX codec installed to play it. The clip is, of course, 2006
Channel Five in the UK.
Despite knowledge like this, there are always going to be people who ignore their tyres
and at the point where the tread is gone completely, they are within a couple of hundred
miles of driving on the metal overbanding in the tyre carcass itself. There's really no
excuse for not changing your tyres when the tread gets low. Sure, when you go to get
them done, the price will seem steep - it always does with tyres. But it will seem like a
wise investment next time you find yourself pirouetting across three lanes of wet
motorway traffic towards the crash barrier. Which leads us nicely on to the subject of.....

AQUAPLANING / HYDROPLANING.
By this point you probably understand that one of the functions of your car's tyres is to
pump water out of the tread on wet road surfaces. As the tyre spins, the tread blocks
force water into the sipes and grooves and those channel water out and away from the
contact patch where the tyre meets the road. As your tread wears down, the depth of
the grooves and sipes gets less, which in turn reduces the tyre's ability to remove water.
At some point, the tread will get down to a point where all but the lightest of showers will
turn any road into a skating rink for you. This is called aquaplaning and how it happens
is really simple: as you drive in the wet, your tyres form a natural but slight bow wave on
the road surface. Some of the water escapes around the side of the tyre as spray whilst
the rest goes under the tyre. The tyre tread pumps the water out to the sides and the
contact patch remains in good contact with the road. As the amount of water becomes
more or deeper (heavier rain, or travelling faster for example), you end up with the tyre
riding on a cushion of water as the volume of water in the 'bow wave' overcomes the
tyre's ability to disperse it. At this point, it doesn't matter what you do - braking,
accelerating and steering have no effect because the tyre is actually making no contact
with the road surface any more. In fact, the worst thing you can do is to brake, because
stopping the rotation of the wheels removes any last chance the tyres have at removing
the water. If you let off the accelerator instead, as wind resistance and other factors
begin to slow you down, at some point you'll go back through the critical depth of water
and the tyres will begin to grip again.

Under good conditions, with adequate tread, light water buildup and good road drainage, the tyre tread is abl
road.

Aquaplaning doesn't just happen because of dodgy tyre tread depth. You can get into
just as much trouble with brand new tyres if you go careening through a deep puddle.
The new tyres may have their full complement of tread depth with nice deep grooves
and sipes, but the depth of the water in the puddle might be so much that the volume of
water can't be removed quickly enough. Every tyre has a finite limit to the amount of
water it can pump out of the way. Exceed that limit and you're aquaplaning.

ROAD SURFACE DESIGN

It's worth spending a moment whilst we're on the subject of aquaplaning to talk about
road surface design. I know your morning commute along pot-holed roads full of cracks
might lead you to believe otherwise, but for the most part, roads, especially motorways,
are designed to lessen the risk of aquaplaning in the first place. Most roads are built
with a slope to one side or the other, or are crowned in the middle (ie. the road surface
is higher in the middle than at the sides). The idea being that any water buildup is
encouraged to run off the road surface to drainage ditches at the sides. Some newer
designs of asphalt are more porous than the old stuff, and when laid on top of a
subsurface drainage system, will allow a certain amount of water to run down through
the road surface as well as off to the sides.
Slip sliding in a summer downpour. If you've driven for any length of time and ever
been caught in a downpour on a hot summer day, you'll have seen how a super-glue
sticky surface can turn into a teflon ice rink at the drop of a hat. This unusual
phenomenon occurs because of the way most road surfaces are manufactured and put
down. There's a lot of oil and tar involved in laying asphalt and over the course of its
lifetime, a road surface will naturally leech out these products. During normal dry-
weather driving or a light rain storm, they get dispersed gradually by the action of trucks,
cars and motorbikes driving on the road. However, in a downpour, the road surface
cools off extremely quickly. As it contracts slightly, the oils and tars are squeezed out at
a quicker rate than normal and because oil is less dense than water, any residue floats
to the top of the layer of rain water on the road. The result is oil-on-water which has zero
grip. Next time you drive through a sudden summer downpour, look at the road surface
once it has stopped raining - you'll see it covered in rainbow artifacts where the sunlight
is reflecting off the wet, oily layer.

Like the site? The page you're reading is free, but if you like what you see and feel you've
learned something, a small donation to help pay down my car loan would be appreciated.
Thank you.

AQUACHANNEL TYRES
Towards the end of the 90's, there was a gradually increasing trend for manufacturers to
design and build so-called aquachannel tyres. Brand names you might recognise
are Goodyear Aquatred andContinental Aquacontact. These differ noticeably from the
normal type of tyre you would expect to see on a car in that the have a central groove
running around the tread pattern. This, combined with the new tread patterns
themselves lead the manufacturers to startling water-removal figures. According to
Goodyear, their versions of these tyres can expel up to two gallons of water a second
from under the tyre when travelling at motorway speeds. My personal experience of
these tyres is that they work. Very well in fact - they grip like superglue in the wet. The
downside is that they are generally made of a very soft compound rubber which leads to
greatly reduced tyre life. You've got to weigh it up - if you spend most of the year driving
around in the wet, then they're possibly worth the extra expense. If you drive around
over 50% of the time in the dry, then you should think carefully about these tyres
because it's a lot of money to spend for tyres which will need replacing every 10,000
miles in the dry.

TWINTIRE

This was an idea from the USA based on the twin tyres used in Western Australia on
their police vehicles. It's long been the practice for closed-wheel racing cars, such as
NASCAR vehicles, to use two inner tubes inside each tyre, allowing for different
pressures inside the same tyre. They also allow for proper run-flat puncture capability.
TwinTires tried putting the same principle into effect for those of us with road-going cars.
Their system used specially designed wheel rims to go with their own unique type of
tyres. Each wheel rim was actually molded as two half-width rims joined together. The
TwinTires tyres then fitted those double rims. Effectively, you got two independent tyres
per wheel, each with their own inner tube or tubeless pressure. The most obvious
advantage of this system was that it was an almost failsafe puncture proof tyre. As most
punctures are caused by single objects entering the tyre at a single point, with this
system, only one tyre would deflate, leaving the other untouched so that your vehicle
was still controllable. TwinTires claimed a reduction in braking distance too, typically
from 150ft down to 120ft when braking from a fixed 70mph. The other advantage was
that the system was effectively an evolution of the Aquatread type single tyres that can
be bought over the counter. In the dry, you had more or less the same contact area as a
normal tyre. In the wet, most of the water was channeled into the gap between the two
tyres leaving (supposedly) a much more efficient wet contact patch. History is cruel to
those who buck the trend, and as it turned out this system was just a passing fad. Their
products disappeared around 2001 and the website vanished shortly thereafter. I've not
seen any trace of them since. Daunltess Motor Corp are the last remaining suppliers
and they have all the remaining stock.
For an independent opinion on TwinTyre systems from someone who used them avidly,
have a read of his e-mail to me which has a lot of information in it.

RUN-FLAT TYRES

Yikes! Tyres for the accident-prone. As it's name implies, it's a tyre designed to run
when flat. ie. when you've driven over a cunningly placed plank full of nails, you can
blow out the tyre and still drive for miles without needing to repair or re-inflate it. I should
just put one thing straight here - this doesn't mean you can drive on forever with a
deflated tyre. It means you won't careen out of control across the motorway and nail
some innocent wildlife when you blowout a tyre. It's more of a safety thing - it's designed
to allow you to continue driving to a point where you can safely get the tyre changed (or
fixed). The way it works is to have a reinforced sidewall on the tyre. When a normal tyre
deflates, the sidewalls squash outwards and are sliced off by the wheel rims, wrecking
the whole show. With run-flat tyres, the reinforced sidewall maintains some height in the
tyre allowing you to drive on. Most run-flat tyres come with a TPMS to alert that you've
got a puncture (see TPMS later in the page)

Both Goodyear (Run-flat Radials) and Michelin (Zero Pressure System) introduced run-
flat tyres to their ranges in 2000. Goodyear named their technology "EMT", meaning
Extended Mobility Tyre.

Not content with their Zero Pressure System, Michelin developed the PAX system too in
late 2000 which is a variation on a theme. Rather than super-supportive sidewalls, the
PAX system relies on a wheel-rim and tyre combination to provide a derivative run-flat
capability. As well as the usual air-filled tyre, there is now a reinforced polymer support
ring inside. This solid ring clips the air-filled tyre by it's bead to the wheel rim which is
the first bonus - it prevents the air-filled tyre from coming off the rim. The second bonus,
of course, is that if you get a puncture, the air-filled tyre deflates, and the support ring
takes the strain. Michelin say this system is good for over 100 miles at 80km/h (50mph).
The downside is that I believe the PAX system is just that - a system. ie. you can't use
PAX tyres on standard rims and you can't use standard tyres on PAX rims. This is
because PAX tyres have asymmetric beads. In English this means that the inside bead
and outside bead are a different diameter. Typically a 410 PAX tyre will have bead
diameters of 400mm on the outside and 420mm on the inside.

Picture credit: Michelin Press Kit

Remember up the top of this page where I was talking about tyre sizes and mentioned
that Michelin had come up with a new 'standard' ? Imagine you're used to seeing tyre
sizes written like this : 205/60 R16. If you've read my page this far, you ought to know
what that means. But for the PAX system, that same tyres size now becomes : 205-650
R410 A. Decoding this, the 205 is the same as it always was - tyre width in mm. The
650 now means 650mm in overall diameter, rather than a sidewall height of 65% of
205mm. The 410 is the metric equivalent of a 16inch wheel rim. Finally, the 'A' means
"This is a PAX system wheel or tyre with an asymmetric bead".

THE MICHELIN PAX TYRE SIZE CONVERTER

You can use this little script to convert Michelin PAX sizes into the closest conventional
tyre size. ie. it's not going to be exact, but the resulting size is as close as you can get in
standard tyre sizes. Remember though that the PAX system uses asymmetric beads so
this typically means you can't fit a standard tyre to a PAX rim.

Your PAX tyre size: / R / R

205 650 410

What about the criminals?

Just because this is how my mind works, my immediate thought when I heard about
run-flat tyres was "so now criminals can outfit their cars with these, and not be prone to
the police stinger devices used to slow down getaway cars." I e-mailed all the major tyre
companies for their response on this matter, and so far have only had one reply - from
Michelin. Here's what they have to say on the matter:
"Michelin's aim is to propose products allowing people to drive in enhanced conditions
of security. From this point of view, run-flat tyres and PAX System represent great
progress in the history of the automotive industry. Indeed, these two developments
allow drivers to go on driving even after a puncture, if, for instance, they do not feel safe
to stop on the hard shoulder of a highway to repair their tyre, or they are in a hazardous
area. Michelin is of course aware that such inventions, like any other innovations can be
used in a distorted way : cheques for example are meant to facilitate transactions,
however the signature on a cheque can be falsified and money can go into the wrong
hands ; run flat tyres are designed to provide better security to a driver, but could be
used for other purposes by somebody having other intentions. Michelin is very sorry
that it is unable to control any abuses made of its tyres by individuals intent on breaking
the law."

MICHELIN TWEELS

In 2005, Michelin unveiled their "Tweel" concept - a word made up of the combination
of Tyre and Wheel. After decades of riding around on air-filled tyres, Michelin would like
to convince us that there is a better way. They're working on a totally air-less tyre.
Airless = puncture proof. The Tweel is the creation of Michelin's American technology
centre - no doubt working with the sound of the Ford Explorer / Bridgestone Firestone
lawsuit still ringing in their ears.
The Tweel is a combined single-piece tyre and wheel combination, hence the name,
though it actually begins as an assembly of four pieces bonded together: the hub, a
polyurethane spoke section, a "shear band" surrounding the spokes, and the tread band
- the rubber layer that wraps around the circumference and touches the road. The
Tweel's hub functions just like your everyday wheel right now - a rigid attachment point
to the axle. The polyurethane spokes are flexible to help absorb road impacts. These
act sort of like the sidewall in a current tyre. But turn a tweel side-on and you can see
right through it. The shear band surrounding the spokes effectively takes the place of
the air pressure, distributing the load. Finally, the tread is similar in appearance to a
conventional tyre. The image on the right is my own rendering based on the teeny tiny
images I found from the Michelin press release. It gives you some idea what the new
Tweel could look like.
One of the basic shortcomings of a tyre filled with air is that the inflation pressure is
distributed equally around the tyre, both up and down (vertically) as well as side-to side
(laterally). That property keeps the tyre round, but it also means that raising the
pressure to improve cornering - increasing lateral stiffness - also adds up-down
stiffness, making the ride harsher. With the Tweel's injection-molded spokes, those
characteristics are no longer linked. Only the spokes toward the bottom of the tyre at
any point in its rotation are determining the grip / ride quality. Those spokes rotating
around the top of the tyre are free to flex to full extension without affecting the grip or
ride quality.
The Tweel offers a number of benefits beyond the obvious attraction of being
impervious to nails in the road. The tread will last two to three times as long as today's
radial tyres, Michelin says, and when it does wear thin it can be retreaded. For
manufacturers, the Tweel offers an opportunity to reduce the number of parts,
eliminating most of the 23 components of a typical new tyre as well as the costly air-
pressure monitors now required on all new vehicles in the United States.
(See TPMS below).
Another benefit? No spare wheels. That leaves more room for boot/trunk space, and
reduces the carried weight in the vehicle.
Reporters who took the change to drive an Audi A4 sedan equipped with Tweels early in
2005 complained of harsh vibration and an overly noisy ride. Michelin are well aware of
these shortfalls - mostly due to vibration in the spoke system. (They admit they're in
extremely-alpha-test mode.) Another problem is that the wheels transmit a lot more
force and vibration into the cabin than regular tyres. A plus point though is cornering
ability. Because of the rigidity of the spokes and the lack of a flexing sidewall, cornering
grip, response and feel is excellent.
There are other negatives: the flexibility, at this early stage, contributes to greater
friction, though it is within 5% of that generated by a conventional radial tyre. And so far,
the Tweel is no lighter than the tyre and wheel it replaces. Almost everything else about
the Tweel is undetermined at this early stage of development, including serious matters
like cost and frivolous questions like the possibilities of chrome-plating. Either way, it's a
promising look into the future.
Tweels are being tested out on the iBot - Dean Kamen's (the Segway inventor) new
prototype wheelchair, and by the military. The military are interested because the Tweel
is incredibly resistant to damage, even caused by explosions. Michelin hope to bring
this technology to everyday road car use, construction equipment, and potentially even
aircraft tyres.

Picture credit: Michelin Press Kit

STIFFENED SIDEWALLS - GOODYEAR EAGLE

WITH RESPONSEDGE
In 2007, Goodyear added a new tyre to their Eagle range, called the Eagle
Responsedge. The tyre has the same basic construction as all modern tyres but
Goodyear added a carbon-fibre insert to the outer sidewall. If you've seen footage of
cars cornering hard in racing, you'll have seen how the sidewalls deform under extreme
cornering loads. The idea of putting a carbon fibre insert in the outer sidewall is that it
stiffens the sidewall to help prevent compression and sideways shearing. That in turn
helps to keep more of the contact patch on the road during cornering as the tyre isn't
trying to roll out of the corner so much. Ultimately the idea is improved cornering speed
and handling characteristics. It's another of the trickle-down technologies from Formula
1 motor racing that has finally hit the streets for the consumer.
From the Goodyear markering blurb:"Featuring a dual-compound asymmetric tread
design, the tire sports a sound- and shock-absorbing InsuLayer made with DuPont
KEVLAR, to help provide a smooth, quiet ride and to promote even treadwear. On the
inboard side of the tread, an All Season Zone offers an open tread pattern, Aquachutes
and lateral grooves for water dispersion, and a high number of TredLock technology
microgrooves. All of these tread features are supported by a new silica tread
compound. Combined, the All Season Zone provides all-season traction and handling
confidence in wet and wintery conditions."

Picture credit: Goodyear

KEVLAR PUNCTURE RESISTENCE -

GOODYEAR WRANGLER 'SILENTARMOR'
In 2007, Goodyear added another new tyre to their range which they advertised as
having 'SilentArmor' (note the spelling - this is a tyre for the American market). This is a
truck and SUV tyre that is essentially constructed identically to a normal radial except
that one of the steel belts has been replaced with a Kevlar belt. Kevlar is a
particularly light but very strong synthetic fiber that doesn't rust or corrode and is five
times stronger than steel for the equivalent weight. (It's one of the many things found in
bulletproof jackets). The idea here is that the Kevlar belt helps absorb some of the
road noise of the tyre as well as making the tread more resistent to punctures. It's
interesting to note that Kevlar is being advertised in this way as if its something new.
In fact, DuPont originally intended their ballistic fabric to replace the steel belts in car
tyres but it never quite made it that far.
In addition to the Kevlar belt, the tyre also has strengthened sidewalls as well as an
extended rubber lip around the sidewall to try to help prevent kerbing from damaging
your wheels. Goodyear site

COLOURED DOTS AND STRIPES - WHATS

THAT ALL ABOUT?

When you're looking for new tyres, you'll often see some coloured dots on the tyre
sidewall, and bands of colour in the tread. These are all here for a reason, but it's more
for the tyre fitter than for your benefit.
The dots on the sidewall typically denote unformity and weight. It's impossible to
manufacture a tyre which is perfectly balanced and perfectly manufactured in the belts.
As a result, all tyres have a point on the tread which is lighter than the rest of the tyre - a
thin spot if you like. It's fractional - you'd never notice it unless you used tyre
manufacturing equipment to find it, but its there. When the tyre is manufactured, this
point is found and a coloured dot is put on the sidewall of the tyre corresponding to the
light spot. Typically this is a yellow dot (although some manufacturers use different
colours just to confuse us) and is known as the weight mark. Typically the yellow dot
should end up aligned to the valve stem on your wheel and tyre combo. This is because
you can help minimize the amount of weight needed to balance the tyre and wheel
combo by mounting the tyre so that its light point is matched up with the wheel's heavy
balance point. Every wheel has a valve stem which cannot be moved so that is
considered to be the heavy balance point for the wheel. (Trivia side note : wheels also
have light and heavy spots. Typically the heaviest spot on the wheel is found during
manufacture and the valve stem is then located diametrically opposite that point to help
balance the wheel out).
As well as not being able to manufacture perfectly weighted tyres, it's also nearly
impossible to make a tyre which is perfectly circular. By perfectly circular, I mean down
to some nauseating number of decimal places. Again, you'd be hard pushed to actually
be able to tell that a tyre wasn't round without specialist equipment. Every tyre has a
high and a low spot, the difference of which is called radial runout. Using sophisticated
computer analysis, tyre manufacturers spin each tyre and look for the 'wobble' in the
tyre at certain RPMs. It's all about harmonic frequency (you know - the frequency at
which something vibrates, like the Tacoma Narrows bridge collapse). Where the first
harmonic curve from the tyre wobble hits its high point, that's where the tyre's high spot
is. Manufacturers typically mark this point with a red dot on the tyre sidewall, although
again, some tyres have no marks, and others use different colours. This is called
the uniformity mark. Correspondingly, most wheel rims are also not 100% circular, and
will have a notch or a dimple stamped into the wheel rim somewhere indicating their low
point. It makes sense then, that the high point of the tyre should be matched with the
low point of the wheel rim to balance out the radial runout.

WHAT IF BOTH DOTS ARE PRESENT?

Generally speaking, if you get a tyre with both a red and a yellow dot on it, it should be
mounted according to the red dot - ie. the uniformity mark should line up with the dimple
on the wheel rim, and the yellow mark should be ignored.
WHAT ABOUT THE COLOURED STRIPES IN THE TREAD?

Often when you buy tyres, there will be a coloured band or stripe running around the
tyre inside the tread. These can be any colour and can be placed laterally almost
anyhwere across the tread. For ages I thought they were either a uniformity check - a
painted mark used to check the "roundness" of the tyre - or and indication of the tyre
runout. Turns out the answer is far simpler and much more disappointing. The lines are
sprayed on to the rubber tread stock after it has been extruded during the
manufacturing process. The problem is that the tread stock can be manufactured hours
or days before it's actually used to make the tyres. So the lines serve one main purpose
- they're an in-factory identification for the tyre builders to make sure they're using the
correct tread stock for the carcass of the tyre they're assembling. Think of them like a
barcode. They can sometimes indicate the rubber compound or the intended tyre size
and often you'll find other information printed on to the tread as well as the stripes (see
the example below of a number code).

When a tyre is being assembled, all the components are put together (carcass, beads,
belts etc) inside a tyre mould and the stripes help the technician to align the tread stock
properly. The inside of the mould has the inverse pattern of the tyre tread in it so that
when heat and pressure are applied, the rubber in the tread stock is forced into the
mould. Excess rubber is allowed to escape through little holes (called spew holes)
which is why you'll often find what look like rubber hairs on a new tyre - they're excess
rubber from the spew holes that was never trimmed. If you look closely at where one of
the sprayed-on lines crosses a tread block, you'll be able to see where it's been
stretched during the moulding process. The picture above is a good example.
All this is well and good if the manufacturing plant uses an 8-segment petal-type tyre
machine (where the mould is on the inside of a bunch of metal 'petals' that close to form
the finished shape), but on older 2-part moulds, the tread stock can be pushed off-
centre as the mould closes so the lines also serve one other function - a visual
inspection post-assembly to make sure the tyre tread remained in the correct place. As
the tyre is being spun during inspection, the lines will wander across the tread if
something became misaligned during the manufacturing process.

RUNNING IN YOUR NEW TYRES

It may sound like an odd concept, but if you buy brand new tyres and slap them on your
car, then try to drive the nuts off it, you're going to come a cropper. The reason, believe
it or not, is that all tyres need a running-in (or scrubbing-in) period. When tyres are
made, the inside of the tyre mould is first lined with a non-stick coating. When the tyres
pop out, some of that releasing agent sticks to the tyres themselves. What you get is a
nice shiny new tyre, with 'shiny' being the operative word. The releasing agent can take
as much as 500 miles to scrub off. Now for the everyday Joe, this isn't really so much of
an issue, but for people who are fast drivers, or think they're fast drivers, this can lead to
a distressing loss-of-grip mid-corner and a visit to something large and solid. It's doubly
important for motorcyclists because they have half the number of tyres and a much
smaller contact patch per tyre to boot.

GETTING THE SAME RESULTS WITH TYRE-BLACK POLISH OR

DRESS-UP POLISH

If you're proud of your car (or vain) you might have been tempted at one point or
another to use a Back-to-Black type substance on them to blacken up the sidewalls of
the tyres. These things are over-the-counter items that you can buy in just about any car
parts store and they're designed to remove the dirt and muck from your sidewalls whilst
(allegedly) conditioning the rubber and restoring that factory-fresh look to your tyres.
This is all very good until you use a little too much and/or park the car in the sun. When
that happens, this stuff starts to run down your tyres and into the tread. Worse, I've seen
people using tyre-black on the tread on purpose. This stuff is basically teflon mixed with
WD-40 and if you get it on the tyre tread, your car is going to take on the handling
dynamics of a drunk ice skater. Not in a "ha ha that was funny" sort of way but in a "holy
snot that's gonna hurt!" sort of way. You've been warned.

LEARNING FROM OTHERS - TYRE REVIEWS

With the sheer number of tyres available to you, you might wonder how to choose the
one that's going to suit your driving style. Most tyre websites will have a section for
customer reviews but you need to be careful because the big-name sites (like TyreRack
etc) typically attract people with an axe to grind or those who can never review anything
other than positively. As a result, you'll find the same tyre being given 5-star ratings and
1-star ratings and nothing in between, and the reviews will not be especially
objective. Tyrereviews.co.uk is a new independent site which seems pretty good - it has
a broad spectrum of comments and their reviews are sorted by tyre type as well as by
vehicle. If you can't get what you want from the web, go all old-fashioned and use your
mouth - ask your friends. I know it's an out-of-date concept, but you'd be surprised what
talking to people can reveal, instead of emailing them or worse, txtng yr bff 4 hlp. They
will likely have an opinion one way or another and any opinion is worth listening to when
you're trying to gather information.

SO CHRIS - WHAT DO YOU LIKE?

My personal favourite tyre brand is Yokohama. I've had them on every vehicle I've
owned since 1993. That doesn't necessarily mean they're fabulous tyres, it just means I
like them, I like the way they handle, how they wear and how they make the car feel.
That's the crux of the matter though. Essentially you're never going to know whether a
tyre will suit your needs until you've got them on your car and are driving it the
way you normally drive. My advice: if you find a good brand and style that you like, stick
with it. It might take a few tyre changes to find one but eventually you'll likely find
something that makes you think "hey - this isn't a bad tyre". Just stick with big name
brands. Anything that costs less than about $80 or 50 a tyre will be junk. Trust me.

THE EBAY PROBLEM

This paragraph may seem a little out of place but I have had a lot of problems with a
couple of eBay members (megamanuals and lowhondaprelude) stealing my work,
turning it into PDF files and selling it on eBay. Generally, idiots like this do a copy/paste
job so they won't notice this paragraph here. If you're reading this and you bought this
page anywhere other than from my website at www.carbibles.com, then you have a
pirated, copyright-infringing copy. Please send me an email as I am building a case file
against the people doing this. Go to www.carbibles.com to see the full site and find my
contact details. And now, back to the meat of the subject....

FAT OR THIN? THE QUESTION OF CONTACT

PATCHES AND GRIP
If there's one question guaranteed to promote argument and counter argument, it's this :
do wide tyres give me better grip?
Fat tyres look good. In fact they look stonkingly good. In the dry they are mercilessly full
of grip. In the wet, you might want to make sure your insurance is paid up, especially if
you're in a rear-wheel-drive car. Contrary to what you might think (and to what I used to
think), bigger contact patch does not necessarily mean increased grip. Better yet, fatter
tyres do not mean bigger contact patch. Confused? Check it out:

Pressure=weight/area.
That's about as simple a physics equation as you can get. For the general case of most
car tyres travelling on a road, it works pretty well. Let me explain. Let's say you've got
some regular tyres, as supplied with your car. They're inflated to 30psi and your car
weighs 1500Kg. Roughly speaking, each tyre is taking about a quarter of your car's
weight - in this case 375Kg. In metric, 30psi is about 2.11Kg/cm.
By that formula, the area of your contact patch is going to be roughly 375 / 2.11 =
177.7cm (weight divided by pressure)
Let's say your standard tyres are 185/65R14 - a good middle-ground, factory-fit tyre.
That means the tread width is 18.5cm side to side. So your contact patch with all these
variables is going to be about 177.7cm / 18.5, which is 9.8cm. Your contact patch is a
rectangle 18.5cm across the width of the tyre by 9.8cm front-to-back where it sits 'flat'
on the road.
Still with me? Great. You've taken your car to the tyre dealer and with the help of my
tyre calculator, figured out that you can get some swanky 225/50R15 tyres. You polish
up the 15inch rims, get the tyres fitted and drive off. Let's look at the equation again.
The weight of your car bearing down on the wheels hasn't changed. The PSI in the tyres
is going to be about the same. If those two variables haven't changed, then your contact
patch is still going to be the same : 177.7cm
However you now have wider tyres - the tread width is now 22.5cm instead of 18.5cm.
The same contact patch but with wider tyres means a narrower contact area front-to-
back. In this example, it becomes 177.7cm / 22.5, which is 7.8cm.

And there is your 'eureka' moment. Overall, the area of your contact patch has
remained more or less the same. But by putting wider tyres on, the shape of the contact
patch has changed. Actually, the contact patch is really a squashed oval rather than a
rectangle, but for the sake of simplicity on this site, I've illustrated it as a rectangle - it
makes the concept a little easier to understand. So has the penny dropped? I'll assume
it has. So now you understand that it makes no difference to the contact patch, this
leads us on nicely to the sticky topic of grip.

The area of the contact patch does not affect the actual grip of the tyre. The things
that doaffect grip are the coefficient of friction of the rubber compound and the load on
the tyre. As far as friction is concerned, the formula is relatively simple - F=uN, where F
is the frictional force, N is the Normal force for the surfaces being pressed together and
u is the coefficient of friction. In the case of a tyre, the Normal force basically stays the
same - mass of the car multiplied by gravity. The coefficient of friction also remains
unchanged because it's dependent on the two surfaces - in this case the road and the
tyre's rubber.
The coefficient of friction is in part determined by the rubber compound's ability to 'key'
with the road surface at a microscopic level.

This explains why you can slide in a corner if you change road surface - for example
going from a rough road to a smooth road, or a road surface covered in rain and diesel
(a motorcyclist's pet peeve). The slide happens because the coefficient of friction has
changed.

SO DO WIDER TYRES GIVE BETTER GRIP?

If the contact patch remains the same size and the coefficient of friction and frictional
force remain the same, then surely there is no difference in performance between
narrow and wide tyres? Well there is but it has a lot to do with heat transfer. With a
narrow tyre, the contact patch takes up more of the circumference of the tyre so for any
given rotation, the sidewall has to compress more to get the contact patch on to the
road. Deforming the tyre creates heat. With a longer contact patch and more sidewall
deformation, the tyre spends proportionately less time cooling off than a wider tyre
which has a shorter contact patch and less sidewall deformation. Why does this matter?
Well because the narrower tyre has less capacity for cooling off, it needs to be made of
a harder rubber compound in order to better resist heating in the first place. The harder
compound has less mechanical keying and a lower coefficient of friction. The wider
tyres are typically made of softer compounds with greater mechanical keying and a
higher coefficient of friction. And voila - wider tyres = better grip. But not for the reasons
we all thought.

WHAT ABOUT LATERAL FORCE IN CORNERING?

In terms of the lateral force applied to a tyre during cornering, you eventually come to a
point where slip angle becomes important. The plot below shows an example of
normalisedlateral force (in Kg) versus slip angle (in degrees). Slip angle is best
described as the difference between the angle of the tyres that you've set by steering,
and the direction in which the tyres actually want to travel. As you corner the lateral
force increases on your tyres, and at some point, the lateral force is going to overcome
the mechanical grip of the tyres and that point is defined by the peak slip angle, as
shown in the graph. ie. there comes a point at which no matter how much vertical load
is applied to the tyre (from the vehicle weight), it's going to be overcome by the lateral
force and 'break away' and slip. So why do wider tyres perform better when cornering?
Well apart from the softer rubber compound giving better mechanical keying and a
higher coefficient of friction, they have lower profile sidewalls. This makes them more
resistant to deforming under lateral load, resulting in a more predictable and stable
contact patch. In other words, you can get to a higher lateral load before reaching the
peak slip angle.
In reality, trying to figure this out using static examples and reading some internet hack's
website is all but impossible because what's really important here is dynamic setup. In
reality the contact patch is effectively spinning around your tyre at some horrendous
speed. When you brake or corner, load-transfer happens and all the tyres start to
behave differently to each other. This is why weight transfer makes such a difference
the handling dynamics of the car. Braking for instance; weight moves forward, so load
on the front tyres increases. The reverse happens to the rear at the same time, creating
a car which can oversteer at the drop of a hat. The Mercedes A-class had this problem
when it came out. The load-transfer was all wrong, and a rapid left-right-left on the
steering wheel would upset the load so much that the vehicle lost grip in the rear, went
sideways, re-acquired grip and rolled over. (That's since been changed.) The Audi TT
had a problem too because the load on it's rear wheels wasn't enough to prevent
oversteer which is why all the new models have that daft little spoiler on the back.

If your brain isn't running out of your ears already, then here's a link to where you can
find many raging debates that go on in the Subaru forums about this very subject. If you
decide to read this, you should bear in mind that Simon de Banke, webmaster of
ScoobyNet, is a highly respected expert in vehicle dynamics and handling, and is also
an extremely talented rally driver. It's also worth noting that he holds the World Record
for driving sideways...........

If you decide to fatten up the tyres on your car, another consideration should be
clearance with bits of your car. There's no point in getting super-fat tyres if they're going
to rub against the inside of your wheel arches. Also, on cars with McPherson strut front
suspension, there's a very real possibility that the tyre will foul the steering linkage on
the suspension. Check it first!

HOLY CRAP THAT'S COMPLICATED. ISN'T THERE A SHORTER

ANSWER?

Yes.
Choose the dimensions of your tyre according to the 'comfort/cornering speed' ratio that
suits you. Lower profile/series = more precise cornering. Higher profile/series = more
comfort. To increase the contact patch, lower the tyre pressure a little.

CASTER, CAMBER, ALIGNMENT AND OTHER

VOODOO
ALIGNMENT

This is the general term used to gloss over the next three points:

CASTER

This is the forward (negative) or backwards (positive) tilt of the spindle steering axis. It is
what causes your steering to 'self-centre'. Correct caster is almost always positive. Look
at a bicycle - the front forks have a quite obvious rearward tilt to the handlebars, and so
are giving positive caster. The whole point of it is to give the car (or bike) a noticeable
centre point of the steering - a point where it's obvious the car will be going in straight
line.
CAMBER

Camber is the tilt of the top of a wheel inwards or outwards (negative or positive).
Proper camber (along with toe and caster) make sure that the tyre tread surface is as
flat as possible on the road surface. If your camber is out, you'll get tyre wear. Too much
negative camber (wheels tilt inwards) causes tread and tyre wear on the inside edge of
the tyre. Consequently, too much positive camber causes wear on the outside edge.
Negative camber is what counteracts the tendency of the inside wheel during a turn to
lean out from the centre of the vehicle. 0 or Negative camber is almost always desired.
Positive camber almost always creates handling problems.
The technical reason for this is because when the tyres on the inside of the turn have
negative camber, they will tend to go toward 0 camber, using the contact patch more
efficiently during the turn. If the tyres had positive camber, during a turn, the inside
wheels would tend to even more positive camber, compromising the efficiency of the
contact patch because the tyre would effectively only be riding on its outer edge.
As a car rolls in turns, or as the suspension compresses and extends over undulations
in the road, the camber changes with respect to the ground (because the suspension
mounts move relative to the road surface). To try to minimise this change, and keep the
tyre in the best alignment possible with the road, the suspension parts connected to the
top and bottom of the wheel hub carrier are normally designed to move in a different
arcs (relative to its lateral location). ie. the top control arms / McPherson strut etc. move
in a different arc to the lower control arms and links. This causes a dynamic change in
camber with suspension movement, meaning the more it compresses, the more it
increases (typically) camber, refered to ascamber gain. This counteracts the effects of
the suspension mounting points moving in relation to the road.

TOE IN & OUT

'Toe' is the term given to the left-right alignment of the front wheels relative to each
other. Toe-in is where the front edge of the wheels are closer together than the rear, and
toe-out is the opposite. Toe-in counteracts the tendency for the wheels to toe-out under
power, like hard acceleration or at motorway speeds (where toe-in disappears). Toe-out
counteracts the tendency for the front wheels to toe-in when turning at motorway
speeds. It's all a bit bizarre and contradictory, but it does make a difference. A typical
symptom of too much toe-in will be excessive wear and feathering on the outer edges of
the tyre tread section. Similarly, too much toe-out will cause the same feathering wear
patterns on the inner edges of the tread pattern.
Toe-in is also used to counter act the tyre wear of negative camber. A general rule of
thumb for passenger cars would be around 2mm toe-in per camber for zero tyre
wear.
.A reader of my site emailed me this which is a nice description of toe-in and toe-out.
As a front-wheel-drive car pulls itself forwards, the wheels will tend to pivot arount the
king-pins, and thus towards the center of the car. To ensure they end up straight ahead,
they should sit with a slight toe-out when at rest.
A rear-wheel-drive car pushes itself forward, and the front wheels are rotated by
friction... thus they will tend to want to trail the king-pins, and therefore will want to splay
apart. To ensure that they run parallel when rolling, they should be given some toe-in
when at rest.
The perfect 4WD car will have neutral pressure on the front wheels, so have neither
toe-in or toe-out... however very few companies make the perfect 4WD, so some will
have a small amount to toe-in/out, depending on the dominant axle.

ROTATING YOUR TYRES

This is the practice of swapping the front and back tyres to even out the wear, not the
practice of literally spinning your tyres around (you'd be surprised how often people
seem to get confused by this). I used to believe that this wasn't a good idea. Think
about it: the tyres begin to wear in a pattern, however good or bad, that matches their
position on the car. If you now change them all around, you end up with tyres worn for
the rear being placed on the front and vice versa. However, having had this done a few
times both on front-wheel drive and all-wheel-drive vehicles during manufacturer
services, I' a bit of a convert. I now reckon it actually is A Good Thing. It results in
even overall tyre wear. By this, I mean wear in the tread depth. This is a valid point, but
if you can't be bothered to buy a new pair of tyres when the old pair wear too much,
then you shouldn't be on the road, let alone kidding yourself that putting worn front tyres
on the back and partly worn back tyres on the front will cure your problem.
So how should you rotate your tyres? It depends on whether you have 2-, 4-, front- or
rear-wheel drive, and whether or not you have unidirectional tyres (meaning, those with
tread designed only to spin in one direction). With unidirectional tyres, you can swap the
front and rear per-side, but not swap them side-to-side. If you do, they'll all end up
spinning the wrong way for the tread. Generally speaking you ought to rotate your tyres
every 5,000 miles (8,000km) or so, even if they're showing no signs of wear. The
following table shows the correct way to rotate your tyres. (Click any image to bring up
larger versions with descriptions)

<=" <=" <=" <="

" a="" style="margin: " a="" style="margin: " a="" style="margin: " a="" style="margin:
0px; padding: 0px; 0px; padding: 0px; 0px; padding: 0px; 0px; padding: 0px;
border: none; outline: border: none; outline: border: none; outline: border: none; outline:
0px; font-size: 16px; 0px; font-size: 16px; 0px; font-size: 16px; 0px; font-size: 16px;
vertical-align: baseline; vertical-align: baseline; vertical-align: baseline; vertical-align: baseline;
list-style: square inside; list-style: square inside; list-style: square inside; list-style: square inside;
text-decoration: none; text-decoration: none; text-decoration: none; text-decoration: none;
background: background: background: background:
transparent;"> transparent;"> transparent;"> transparent;">

DIAGNOSING PROBLEMS FROM TYRE WEAR

Your tyre wear pattern can tell you a lot about any problems you might be having with
the wheel/tyre/suspension geometry setup. The first two signs to look for are over- and
under-inflation. Whilst this used to be a problem on older tyres, modern radials have
much stiffer carcasses but even so, you might still be able to spot the following:

Here's a generic fault-finding table for most types of tyre wear if you can spot them:

Problem Cause

Under-inflation

Repeated high-speed cornering

Improper matching of rims and

tyres
Shoulder Wear
Both Shoulders wearing faster than the centre of the Tyres haven't been rotated
tread recently

Over-inflation

Improper matching of rims and

tyres
Centre Wear*
The centre of the tread is wearing faster than the Tyres haven't been rotated
shoulders recently

One-sided wear
One side of the tyre wearing unusually fast
Improper wheel alignment
 (especially camber)

Tyres haven't been rotated

recently

Faulty suspension, rotating

parts or brake parts

Dynamic imbalance of tyre/rim

assembly

Excessive runout of tyre and

rim assembly

Sudden braking and rapid

Spot wear starting
A part (or a few parts) of the circumference of the tread
are wearing faster than other parts. Under inflation

Faulty suspension, rotating

parts or brake parts

Improper wheel alignment

Dynamic imbalance of tyre/rim

assembly

Tyres haven't been rotated

Diagonal wear recently
A part (or a few parts) of the tread are wearing diagonally
faster than other parts. Under inflation

Improper wheel alignment

Feather-edged wear (faulty toe-in)
The blocks or ribs of the tread are wearing in a feather-
edge pattern Bent axle beam

*There is an interesting "but wait" issue with the centre tread wear example above. This
effect can happen even when the pressures have been religiously maintained and might
be due to centrifugal throwout of the centre of the tyre carcass rather than
underinflation. This problem would most likely show itself on high performance vehicles
with wide section tyres. I've had a couple of emails on this particular topic, so go ahead
and think it over, and either stuff a question in the forum or contact me directly if you
have any better ideas.

CHECKING YOUR TYRES

It's amazing that so many people pay such scant attention to their tyres. If you're
travelling at 70mph on the motorway, four little 20-square-centimetre pads of rubber are
all that sits between you and a potential accident. If you don't take care of your tyres,
those contact patches will not be doing their job properly. If you're happy with riding
around on worn tyres, that's fine, but don't expect them to be of any help if you get into
a sticky situation. The key of course, is to check your tyres regularly. If you're a
motorcyclist, do it every night before you lock the bike up. For a car, maybe once a
week. You're looking for signs of adverse tyres wear (see the section above). You're
looking for splits in the tyre sidewall, or chunks of missing rubber gouged out from when
you failed to negotiate that kerb last week. More obvious things to look for are nails
sticking out of the tread. Although if you do find something like this, don't pull it out. As
long as it's in there, it's sealing the hole. When you pull it out, then you'll get the
puncture. That doesn't mean I'm recommending you drive around with a nail in your
tyre, but it does mean you can at least get the car to a tyre place to get it pulled out and
have the resulting hole plugged. The more you look after your tyres, the more they'll
look after you.

LIES, DAMN LIES, AND TYRE PRESSURE

GAUGES
Whilst on the subject of checking your tyres, you really ought to check the pressures
once every couple of weeks too. Doing this does rather rely on you having, or having
access to a working, accurate tyre pressure gauge. If you've got one of those free
pencil-type gauges that car dealerships give away free, then I'll pop your bubble right
now and tell you it's worth nothing. Same goes for the ones you find on a garage
forecourt. Sure they'll fill the tyre with air, but they can be up to 20% out either way.
Don't trust them. Only recently - since about 2003 - have I been able to trust digital
gauges. Before that they were just junk - I had one which told me that the air in my
garage was at 18psi with nothing attached to the valve. That's improved now and
current-generation digital gauges are a lot more reliable. One thing to remember with
digital gauges is to give them enough time to sample the pressure. If you pop it on and
off, the reading will be low. Hold it on the valve cap for a few seconds and watch the
display (if you can).

Generally speaking you should only trust a decent, branded pressure gauge that you
can buy for a small outlay - $30 maybe - and keep it in your glove box. The best types
are the ones housed in a brass casing with a radial display on the front and a pressure
relief valve. I keep one in the car all the time and it's interesting to see how badly out the
other cheaper or free ones are. My local garage forecourt has an in-line pressure gauge
which over-reads by about 1.5psi. This means that if you rely on their gauge, your tyres
are all 1.5psi short of their recommended inflation pressure. That's pretty bad. My local
garage in England used to have one that under-read by nearly 6 psi, meaning
everyone's tyres were rock-hard because they were 6psi over-inflated. I've yet to find
one that matches my little calibrated gauge.
One reader pointed something else out to me. Realistically even a cheap pressure
gauge is OK provided it is consistent. This is easy to check by taking three to five
readings of the same tyre and confirming they are all the same, then confirming it reads
(consistently) more for higher pressure and less for lower pressure.
One last note : if you're a motorcyclist, don't carry your pressure gauge in your pocket -
if you come off, it will tear great chunks of flesh out of you as you careen down the
road....

TYRE PRESSURE AND GAS-MILEAGE

For the first two years of our new life in America, I'd take our Subaru for its service, and
it would come back with the tyres pumped up to 40psi. Each time, I'd check the door
pillar sticker which informed me that they should be 32psi front and 28psi rear, and let
the air out to get to those values. Eventually, seeing odd tyre wear and getting fed up of
doing this, I asked one of the mechanics "why do you always over-inflate the tyres?" I
got a very long and technical response which basically indicated that Subaru are one of
the manufacturers who've never really adjusted their recommended tyre pressures in
line with new technology. It seems that the numbers they put in their manuals and door
stickers are a little out of date. I'm a bit of a skeptic so I researched this on the Internet
in some of the Impreza forums and chat rooms and it turns out to be true. So I pumped
up the tyres to 40psi front and rear, as the garage had been doing, and as my research
indicated. The result, of course, is a much stiffer ride. But the odd tyre wear has gone,
and my gas-mileage has changed from a meagre 15.7mpg (U.S) to a slightly more
respectable 20.32 mpg (U.S). That's with mostly stop-start in-town driving. Compare
that to the official quoted Subaru figures of 21mpg (city) and 27mpg (freeway) and you'll
see that by changing the tyre pressures to not match the manual and door sticker, I've
basically achieved their quoted figures.

So what does this prove? Well for one it proves that tyre pressure is absolutely linked to
your car's economy. I can get an extra 50 miles between fill-ups now. It also proves that
it's worth researching things if you think something is a little odd. It does also add weight
to the above motto about not trusting forecourt pressure gauges. Imagine if you're
underfilling your tyres because of a dodgy pressure gauge - not only is it dangerous, but
it's costing you at the pump too.

WHAT'S THE "CORRECT" TYRE PRESSURE?

How long is a piece of string?
Seriously though, you'll be more likely to get a sensible answer to the length of a piece
of string than you will to the question of tyres pressures. Lets just say a good starting
point is the pressure indicated in the owner's manual, or the sticker inside the driver's
side door pillar. I say 'starting point' because on every car I've owned, I've ended up
deviating from those figures for one reason or another. On my Subaru Impreza, as
outlined above, I got much better gas mileage and no difference in tyre wear by
increasing my pressures to 40psi. On my Honda Element, I cured the vague handling
and outer-tyre-edge wear by increasing the pressures from the manufacturer-
recommended 32/34psi front and rear respectively, to 37psi all round. On my Audi
Coupe I cured some squirrelly braking problems by increasing the pressure at the front
from 32psi to 36psi. On my really old VW Golf, I cured bad fuel economy and vague
steering by increasing the pressures all-round to 33psi.
So what can you, dear reader, learn from my anecdotes? Not much really. It's pub-
science. Ask ten Subaru Impreza owners what they run their tyres at and you'll get ten
different answers. It depends on how they drive, what size wheels they have, what type
of tyres they have, the required comfort vs. handling levels and so on and so forth.
That's why I said the sticker in the door pillar is a good starting point. It's really up to you
to search the internet and ask around for information specific to your car.

THE MAX. PRESSURE -10% THEORY.

Every tyre has a maximum inflation pressure stamped on the side somewhere. This is
the maximum pressure the tyre can safely achieve under load. It is not the pressure you
should inflate them to.
Having said this, I've given up using the door pillar sticker as my starting point and
instead use the max.pressure-10% theory. According to the wags on many internet
forums you can get the best performance by inflating them to 10% less than their
recommended maximum pressure (the tyres, not the wags - they already haves inflated
egos). It's a vague rule of thumb, and given that every car is different in weight and
handling, it's a bit of a sledgehammer approach. But from my experience it does seem
to provide a better starting point for adjusting tyre pressures. So to go back to my
Subaru Impreza example, the maximum pressure on my Yokohama tyres was 44psi.
10% of that is 4.4, so 44-4.4=39.6psi which is about where I ended up. On my Element,
the maximum pressure is 40psi so the 10% rule started me out at 36psi. I added one
more to see what happened and it got better. Going up to 38psi and it definitely went off
the boil, so for my vehicle and my driving style, 37psi on the Element was the sweet
spot.

THE OTHER ALTERNATIVE - DON'T MESS WITH YOUR

PRESSURES AT ALL

So - raising the pressure can extend a tyre's life because there is now less rubber
contact with the road, the tyre is stiffer and therefore heats up less so lasts longer and
less friction with the road gives greater MPG. Also, less sidewall flex will give a more
positive feeling of steering accuracy but it can result in less ultimate grip and sudden
unexpected loss of grip at the limit of adhesion. Raising or lowering tyre pressures too
much either side of manufacturers recommendations could be at the expense of a less
safe, more uncomfortable vehicle. So should we take all vehicle manufacturers
recommendations as being absolutely correct? Remember that thousands of hours go
into the development and testing of a car. If you've dicked around with your tyre
pressures and still don't think it's right, go back to the door pillar sticker and try that
again - you could be surprised.

Like the site? The page you're reading is free, but if you like what you see and feel you've
learned something, a small donation to help pay down my car loan would be appreciated.
Thank you.

NITROGEN INFLATION
Nitrogen inflation (nitrogen filled tyres) is one of those topics that gets discussed in car
circles a lot. Some people swear by it, whilst others consider it to be an expensive rip
off. So what's the big idea? Well there are two common theories on this.

Theory 1: nitrogen molecules are larger than oxygen molecules so they won't
permeate through the rubber of the tyre like oxygen will, and thus you'll never lose
pressure over time due to leakage. The fact is any gas will leak out of a tyre if its at a
higher pressure than the ambient pressure outside. The only way to stop it is a non-gas-
permeable membrane lining the inside of the tyre.
The science bit: Water is about half the size of either nitrogen or oxygen, so it might
diffuse out of the tyre faster, but it would have to be much, much faster to make a
difference. Tyres can leak 1-2 psi a month at the extreme end of the scale although it's
not clear how much of that is by permeation through the rubber, and how much is
through microscopic leaks of various sorts. For a racing tyre to lose significant water
during its racing lifetime (maybe an hour or so for Formula 1), the permeation rate would
have to be hundreds of times faster than oxygen or nitrogen, so that pretty much
cancels out the idea that it's the molecule size that makes the difference.

Theory 2: Nitrogen means less water vapour. This is more to do with the thermal
properties than anything else. Nitrogen is an inert gas; it doesn't combust or oxidise.
The process used to compress nitrogen eliminates water vapor and that's the key to this
particular theory. When a tyre heats up under normal use, any water vapour inside it
also heats up which causes an increase in tyre pressure. By removing water vapor with
a pure nitrogen fill, you're basically going to allow the tyre to stay at a more constant
pressure irrespective of temperature over the life of the tyre. In other words, your tyre
pressures won't change as you drive.
The science bit: The van der Waals gas equation provides a good estimate for
comparing the expansions of oxygen and nitrogen to water. If you compare moist air
(20C, 80% RH) to nitrogen, you'll find that going up as far as 80C results in the moist
air increasing in pressure by about 0.01 psi less per litre volume than nitrogen. Moist air
will increase in pressure by 7.253psi whereas nitrogen will increase in pressure by
7.263psi. Even humid air has only a small amount of water in it (about 2 mole % which
means about 2% by volume), so that all puts a bit of a blunt tip on the theory that it's the
differences in thermal expansion rates that give nitrogen an advantage. In fact it would
seem to suggest that damp air is marginallybetter than nitrogen. Go figure.

So which option is right - smaller molecules, or less water vapour? It would seem
neither. A reader of this site had a good thought on the whole nitrogen inflation thing. He
wrote: Some racing driver with a scant understanding of chemistry and physics thought
that nitrogen would be better because (insert plausible but incorrect science here) and
he started using it in his tyres. He won some races and word got out about the nitrogen
fill. Nitrogen isn't significantly more expensive to use than plain old air, so pretty soon
everyone was doing it.
Hey, until I hear a reason that makes good scientific sense, this explanation seems just
as good.
Nitrogen inflation is nothing new - the aerospace world has been doing it for years in
aircraft tyres (you don't want the water content of air-filled tyres to freeze to ice in-flight -
it makes the tyres horribly unbalanced for landing). Racing teams will also often use
nitrogen inflation, but largely out of convenience rather than due to any specific
performance benefit, which would tend to fit with the armchair science outlined above.
Nitrogen is supplied in pressurised tanks, so no other equipment is needed to inflate the
tyres - no compressors or generators. Apart from that Nitrogen won't provide fuel in the
event of a pit lane fire whereas compressed oxygen tanks do, so there's a safety issue
at play too. (Remember Jos Verstappen's pit lane fire in 1994?)

So does it make a difference to drivers in the real world? Well consider this; The air you
breathe is already made up of 78% nitrogen. The composition is completed by 21%
oxygen and tiny percentages of argon, carbon dioxide, neon, methane, helium, krypton,
hydrogen and xenon. The kit that is used to generate nitrogen for road tyres typically
only gets to about 95% purity. To get close to that in your tyres, you'd need to inflate and
deflate them several times to purge any remaining oxygen and even then you're only
likely to get about 90% pure nitrogen. So under ideal conditions, you're increasing the
nitrogen content of the gas in the tyre from 78% to 90%. Given that nitrogen inflation
from the average tyre workshop is a one-shot deal (no purging involved) you're more
likely to be driving around with 80% pure nitrogen than 90%. That's a 2% difference
from bog standard air. On top of that, nitrogen inflation doesn't make your tyres any less
prone to damage from road debris and punctures and such. It doesn't make them any
stronger, and if you need to top them up and use a regular garage air-line to do it,
you've diluted whatever purity of nitrogen was in the tyres right there. For $30 a tyre for
nitrogen inflation, do you think that's worth it? For all the alleged benefits of a nitrogen
fill, you'd be far better off finding a tyre change place that has a vapour-elimination
system in their air compressor. If they can pump up your tyres withdry air, you'll get
about the same benefits as you would with a nitrogen inflation but for free.

TPMS - TYRE PRESSURE MONITOR SYSTEMS

For car nerds who live in America, you'll no doubt remember the Ford Explorer /
Firestone Bridgestone lawsuits of the early 21st century. A particular variety of Firestone
tyre, sold as standard on Ford Explorers, had a nasty knack of de-laminating at speed
causing high-speed blowouts, which, because the Explorer was an S.U.V, resulted in
high-speed rollover accidents. After the smoke cleared, it turned out that the tyres were
particularly susceptible to running at low-pressure. Where most tyres could handle this,
the Firestones could not, heated up, delaminated and blammo - instant lawsuit.

THE NHTSA RULING

The American National Highways and Transport Safety Association made some
sweeping regulatory changes in 2002 because of the Ford Explorer case. Section 13 of
the Transportation Recall Enhancement, Accountability and Documentation (TREAD)
Act, required the Secretary of Transportation to mandate a warning system in all new
vehicles to alert operators when their tyres are under inflated.
After extensive study, NHTSA determined that a direct tyre pressure monitoring system
should be installed in all new vehicles. In a "return letter" issued after meetings with the
auto industry, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) demurred, claiming its cost-
benefit calculations provided a basis for delaying a requirement for direct systems. The
final rule, issued May 2002, would have allowed auto makers to install ineffective TPMS
and would have left too many drivers and passengers unaware of dangerously
underinflated tyres. The full text of the various rulings and judgments, along with a lot
more NHTSA information on the subject can be found at this NHSA link.

TPMS IN EUROPE

In stark contrast to the lawsuit-induced TPMS laws in America, in Europe, TPMS is

mandated on all vehicles built from 2010 onwards primarily for running costs. Tyres run
at the correct pressure save money. Simple. The safety issue is involved in the EU law
too but it's not the driving factor (pun entirely intended).
INDIRECT TPMS

Indirect TPMS works without actually changing anything in the wheel or tyre. It relies on
a component of the ABS system on some cars - the wheel speed sensors. Indirect
TPMS reads the wheel speeds from all 4 ABS sensors and compares them. If one
wheel is rotating at a different rate to the other three, it means the tyre pressure is
different and the onboard computer can warn you that one tyre is low. Indirect systems
don't work if you're losing pressure in all four tyres at the same rate because there is no
differential between the rotations. Typically losing pressure in all tyres at once is a result
of either incredibly bad luck or driving over a police spike strip.

CURRENT / FIRST / SECOND GENERATION DIRECT TPMS.

Picture credit: SmarTire

The current generation of direct tyre pressure monitoring systems all work on the same
basic principle, but have two distinctly different designs. The idea is that a small
sensor/transmitter unit is placed in each wheel, in the airspace inside the tyre. The unit
monitors tyre pressure and air temperature, and sends information back to some sort of
central console for the driver to see. This is a prime example of trickle-down technology
from motor racing. Formula 1 teams have been using this technology for years and now
it's coming to consumer vehicles.
At its most basic, the system has one or more lights in the cabin and/or a buzzer or
some other sound. When one of the tyre pressure monitors registers over-temperature
or under-inflation, the driver is alerted by a sound and a light indicating the problem. On
more up-market systems, the indicator will show which tyre has the problem.

Strap-on sensors.
Strap-on type sensors were used primarily by Ford up to 2010 when they abandoned
them. They're about the size of your thumb and clamp to the inside of the wheel rim with
a steel radial belt. SmarTire manufacture an aftermarket kit that can be fitted to most
vehicles. Typically these sensors weigh in at about 42g (about 1 ounces) and the load
is centred on the wheel rim. Normal wheel-balancing procedures can compensate for
these devices. The downside is that you have the potential for the steel strap to fail and
start flailing about inside your tyre, and if you do get a flat, the location of the sensor
means it could be crushed and destroyed. With the Ford variants, they were designed to
sit inside the drop-centre in the rim so they shouldn't be crushed if the tyre goes flat.

Picture credit: Autodax

Valve-stem sensors.
The second type of sensor is a small block which forms part of the inside of the tyre
valve stem. It's a little smaller than the strap-on type and doesn't have the associated
steel band to go with it. Manufacturers include Autodax TRW Automotive and Pacific
Industrial Corp. These sensors are lighter and weigh about 28g (an ounce). Because
they are smaller and are part of the valve stem itself, they are mounted to one side of
the wheel rim. Regular wheel-balancing can account for this weight. There are two
types, rubber and metal. Rubber was first used by General Motors beginning in 2007,
and have been adopted by Ford and Chrysler in 2010. Metal is used by almost all other
manufacturers, including Nissan, Toyota, Honda, Land Rover, Porsche, etc. There are
two subsets of the Metal Stem; ones that are permanently attached to the plastic
sensor, and ones that are replaceable. The replaceable stems are only used on Honda
and Acura vehicles as far as I know. Since the metal stems seal with a rubber grommet,
this should be replaced when a new tyre is mounted on the rim. The same applies to the
rubber stem style TPMS Sensors. There are some disadvantages / things to be aware
of if your vehicle has this type of sensor though:
 Because of its proximity to the side of the wheel, a ham-fisted tyre-changer can
easily destroy the sensor with the machine that is used to take tyres off the rims.
Same goes for the valve stem - because its metal and part of the entire TPMS
assembly, if the valve stem gets dinged or broken, you need a whole new unit.
When re-fitting the tyres, the tyre bead itself, if not correctly located, can crush the
sensor.
Because the valve passes through the TPMS unit, you can't use quick-seal aerosol
type flat tyre remedies because the gunk screws up the transmitters.
Because the valve stem is metal, using the wrong type of metal dust cap can cause
a chemical reaction which can corrode the valve stem and/or dust cap. Similarly if the
tyre-change facility doesn't use a nickel-plated valve core, that can corrode and get
stuck inside.

To compensate for some of the problems listed above, you can also get snap-in type
TPMS sensors which have the metal block on the inside of the wheel rim, but with a
replacable, snap-in rubber valve stem.

Dust-cap sensors.
The third type of sensor is perhaps the easiest to use as an add-on
item. PressurePro sell a system where the sensors are actually built in to the dust caps
that you screw on to your tyre valves. In their system, the in-car monitor ($199 at the
time of writing) plugs into the 12v accessory socket so it requires no in-vehicle wiring.
The PressurePro sensors send readings to the in-car unit every 7 seconds via wireless
RF. The system alerts you if the pressure in any tyre drops 12.5% below its baseline
pressure - the pressure the tyre was at when the sensor cap was first screwed on.
12.5% is actually quite a lot. For a passenger car tyre running at 34psi, 12.5%
represents a drop of 4.25; psi. Whilst that's definitely into the danger zone - the reason
for TPMS in the first place - a drop of 1psi is enough to begin to affect tyre temperature
and gas mileage. Note: the PressurePro system doesn't monitor tyre temperature.
One concern I had about this system was the construction of their dustcaps themselves.
Built wrong, they could cause the one thing they're designed to prevent - tyre deflation.
How? In order for the dustcap-monitor to work, it has to hold the valve stem open once
it is screwed on (see also The Low Tech Approach below). If the unit should crack or
break under duress whilst it is holding the valve stem open, it could lead to tyre
deflation. After speaking to a PressurePro rep, he informed me that there are three
failsafes built into the dustcap to prevent this from happening, even if the cap itself
begins to distort. The caps are tested up to 300F (148C) and down to -40F (-40c) for
distortion and brittle fracture. Each cap costs $50 retail at the time of writing, so judge
for yourself if they're likely to be built better than the low tech approach which cost $19
for four. See the product review page for my test of the PressurePro system.

Picture credit: SmarTire

Driver displays.
As I mentioned above, the driver displays range from the ber simple buzzer and light,
to items which would look at home on the bridge of the starship Enterprise. In the
SmarTire picture above, you can see their sensor has 4 lights on it to the right of the box
- an example of the basic system. The Autodax image shows a more complex system
which shows actual pressures and temperatures as well. SmarTire have a second
generation display available now which shows a graphic representation of the vehicle
along with the problem tyre. Their new system can be set to trigger at specific
temperatures and inflation pressures. For example it can go off when the tyre gets too
hot, when the pressure goes below a set threshold, or the pressure gets a specified
amount below the "starting" pressure (eg if it loses 1psi of pressure). This is SmarTire's
second-generation display showing some of their operating modes:

The limits of what TPMS can do.

All TPMS systems have limits. These are usually around 1.5 PSI/.1 BAR in pressure
accuracy, and 5.4F/3C temperature accuracy. They cannot warn you of an impending
blowout. Tyre blowouts are caused by instantaneous failure of the tyre. However they
can tell you about the symptoms that lead to blowouts, and that is the primary reason
for having TPMS. Tyre failures are usually preceded by long periods of running at lower-
than-acceptable pressures - TPMS would warn you about that. When the tyre pressure
is low, the sidewall flexes a lot more, generating more heat - TPMS can tell you about
that too.
Typically, tyre pressure is transmitted as soon as your vehicle starts moving. Pressure
data is then transmitted every 4-6 minutes randomly, although the sensors read tyre
pressure every 7 seconds or so. If the new pressure reading differs from the last
transmitted pressure by more than 3 PSI/.21 BAR, then the data is transmitted
immediately to alert you of a problem. In some systems, the car's onboard computer
has preset limits so rather than measuring a change, the system simply alerts you when
one of the tyres drops below the preset limit.
Tyre temperature is also normally transmitted as soon as the vehicle starts moving. As
with pressure data, temperature data is then transmitted every 4-6 minutes randomly.
Again the sensors will read the temperature more frequently, however the system will
only alert you if the temperature exceeds 80C/176F.

The down-side of current TPMS.

TPMS sensors need power to work. All the current sensors use batteries. Whilst these
are rated for about 5 years use, or 250,000 miles, the batteries are not replaceable in
any system. The manufacturers don't want a battery cover to come loose and start
zipping around inside your tyre. For one it is dangerous to the inside of the tyre and for
another, if the battery compartment opened, the battery would come out and you'd lose
all sensor data for that wheel. As a result, the batteries are built-in to the sealed unit
during manufacture. If you get a dead sensor, you need to buy a whole new one. Also,
you know what batteries are like in extreme cold and extreme hot - bear that in mind if
you regularly park in snow and ice....
Currently, there are no laws mandating manufacture dates to be put on these third-party
systems. So if you buy one from a store, it could be brand new, or it could have been
sitting on the shelf for a year. You've been warned.

Rotating your tyres or using snow tyres - what you need to know when using TPMS.
All factory-fit TPMS systems are registered at the factory to the vehicle. The onboard
computer stores a unique transponder ID for each unit along with its position on the car
- front left or right, rear left or right for example. If you change wheels in the winter to
wheels with snow tyres on them, you either need to move the TPMS sensors to the
corresponding new wheels, or have a duplicate set. Same goes for rotating your tyres -
if you do front to back rotation for example, the car's computer still reads the TPMS
signals but the sensors it believes are on the front are now on the rear and vice versa.
For vehicles with even tyre pressures all around, this makes no difference unless you
have a system which can tell you which tyre is deflating. If you have a vehicle where the
front pressures are supposed to be lower than the rear, the onboard pressure limits will
be set accordingly and the underinflation alarms will be skewed. Particularly at the front
- the sensors will be expecting higher pressure because they're registered as being on
the rear wheels. You could end up with a constant TPMS alarm.
So how to get around this? There is no easy way. Some vehicles have onboard re-
learning capabilities, where you can get the vehicle into a mode where you can teach it
the location of the sensors in a particular order. Others require reprogramming through
the OBDII port. Either way you need specialist equipment (such as those sold
by Bartec) to stimulate the TPMS transponders in order and then reprogram the vehicle
accordingly. The general procedure starts at the front left tyre once the vehicle is in
'learn' mode and then works clockwise around it. For wireless type reprogramming, the
vehicle waits for the first transponder code, which it receives when you stimulate the
sensor using the special tool, then waits for the second code and so on. For wired-type
reprogramming, the tool stores the 4 transponder codes in order then uploads them to
the car's computer once connected through the OBD II port.
It's something to bear in mind if you have TPMS on your vehicle - winter wheels, tyre
rotations - anything that moves a sensor from it's pre-registered location on the vehicle -
can cause problems.

Picture credit: Bartec

NEXT-GENERATION TPMS.

Several companies are working on the battery problem for the sensor modules. As I
mentioned above, the basic pitfall of all existing systems is that at some point, the
battery will wear out, and you'll need a new sensor. There are a few competing,
emerging technologies right now trying to tackle the problem of perfecting transmitter-
sensors that don't require a battery..
The Pera Piezotag system relies on the inherent properties of piezoelectric materials -
that is a material which generates current when pressure is applied to it. The inside of a
tyre is constantly at pressure so it seems reasonable that a correctly-manufactured
piezoelectric wafer could generate enough current to operate the sensor just from the
pressure inside the tyre.
The ALPS Batteryless TPMS system (licenced from IQ Mobil, a small German R&D
company) is similar to an RFID chip in that it gets its power from the radio signal which
interrogates it. Current systems, (including the Pera proposal) are classified as "active"
transmitter / receiver systems. The sensors transmit signals of their own accord and the
in-car receiver picks them up. The ALPS system is a "passive" RFID transceiver system.
The sensors remain dormant and un-powered until the in-car transceiver sends a high-
power short-range radio signal out which basically carries a "tell me your status"
command. The RF power in the radio signal is enough to cause the RFID unit in the
sensor to power up, take a reading, transmit it and power down. Clever eh? The
downside of this system is that it's likely to be pricey compared to others coming to the
market. There are 9 pcbs in their system; one in each wheel, one in each wheel arch
and one in the console.
Transense Technologies in England are licensing their technology to SmarTire, Michelin
and Honeywell. Unlike the Alps system, Transense's system has only one PCB and
employs passive surface acoustic wave sensors (piezo-based again) at the inner end of
each tyre valve. Their sensors monitor both pressure and temperature. It's worth noting
that Transense hold the patent for resonant SAW technology which expires in 2019.
Pera were exposed to this technology in the early 90's and have since come out with
their own Piezotag system (see above). Coincidence?

Michelin has an inductive (125kHz) system for trucks developed for them by TI,
Goodyear and Siemens have a similar technology system for passenger cars. Qinetic
(formerly DERA / RAE Farnborough) also have an offering.

THE LOW-TECH APPROACH.

If all this electronic wizardry seems too much for you, you can always go to the low-tech
approach. Valve-cap pressure sensors. These are available over-the-counter at just
about any car parts store and are about as simple a device as you can get. You inflate
your tyre, and replace the dust cap on the valve with one of these. If it shows green,
you're OK. If it shows yellow, your tyres have lost some pressure. If it shows red, your
tyres are dangerously underinflated. This system does of course require you to walk
around the car and check each time you want to drive off.
There are some drawbacks to this system which you should be aware of. For the
pressure sensor to read the tyre pressure, it has to depress the valve stem when its
screwed on. This means that the tyre valve is no longer the thing keeping the air in your
tyre - it's now the seal between this pressure cap and the screw threads. If it's not snug,
it will leak slowly and let air out of your tyre. Secondly, there's the question of balance. If
you use these screw-on caps, you should get your wheels re-balanced afterwards
because it's adding weight to the rim. Third there's the question of durability - it's better
for one of these things to come off completely if you hit a pothole because then the
valve stem will re-seal. If you crack the pressure cap, you'll let all the air out of the tyre
very quickly. And finally, the question of accuracy. Typically these things are very coarse
in their readings. A "yellow" signal might not appear until you're 4psi down, and it might
not show red until you're as much as 8psi down. Even 1psi can be a problem so 4psi or
8psi is dangerously underinflated.

THE ULTRA-LOW-TECH APPROACH, AND WHY ALL THIS MONEY

IS BEING SPENT IN THE FIRST PLACE.

Drivers are lazy. That is the very simple reason that all these companies are burning off
millions in R&D budgets, sales and marketing. If we all checked our tyre pressures once
a week using one of the tyre pressure gauges mentioned above, we'd know if there was
a problem brewing. That is the ultra-low-tech approach. The problem is that 90% of
drivers don't ever bother to check their tyres. They either rely on their servicing
mechanic or garage to do it for them, or they rely on blind dumb luck. For as long as
uneducated people drive around blissfully unaware of the latent danger in their tyres,
governments and safety regulators will mandate TPMS. The real question is this : given
how unaware some drivers are of their surroundings and their instruments (think of the
number of people you see driving with their indicators on on the motorway, or with their
fog lights on in bright sunshine) do we really believe that an extra warning light in the
vehicle is going to make any difference? Probably not. The key is that if the system was
installed, and it worked, and the driver ignored it, then the car, wheel and tyre
manufacturers can no longer be held accountable for blowouts and rollovers.

WHEEL DIMENSIONS
Okay. If you want to change the wheels on your car, you need to take some things into
consideration.

Number of bolts or studs

It goes without saying that you can't fit a 4-bolt wheel onto a 5-bolt wheel hub. Sounds
obvious, but people have been known to fork out for an expensive set of alloy wheels
only to find they've got the wrong number of mounting holes.
Pitch Circle Diameter
Right. So you know how many holes there are. Now you need to know the PCD, orPitch
Circle Diameter. This is the diameter of the invisible circle formed by scribing a circle
that passes through the centre point of each mounting hole (red in the image here). If
you've got the right number of holes, but they're the wrong spacing, again the wheel just
won't fit.

PCD notation
Stud patterns and PCD values are typically listed in this notation : 5x114.42. This means
a 5-bolt pattern on an imaginary circle of 114.42mm diameter.
Centre spigot size
This is a tricky one. There are two types of axle/wheel design: hub-centric and lug-
centric.
 For hub-centric designs, the wheel is centred using the spigot before the wheel nuts or
lug bolts are tightened. In this design the spigot normally sticks out from the axle of the
car which is why it can be used to centre the wheel beforehand. With aftermarket alloy
wheels, the spigot hole is often larger than the spigot on the car which is why you need
a spigot-locating or hub-centric ring. This is a plastic or metal doughnut that matches the
outside diameter of the wheel's spigot hole and the inside diameter of the axle spigot,
and is used to ensure a snug fit between the two whilst centring the wheel.
For lug-centric designs, the wheel is centred during the process of tightening the lug
nuts, often because the axle spigot does not stick out (either at all, or far enough) to be
any use in centring the wheel.
Inset or outset
This is very important. Ignore this and you can end up with all manner of nasty
problems. This is the distance in mm between the centre line of the wheel rim, and the
line through the fixing face. You can have inset, outset or neither. This determines how
the suspension and self-centring steering behave. The most obvious problem that will
occur if you get it wrong is that the steering will either become so heavy that you can't
turn the car, or so light that you need to spend all your time keeping the bugger in a
straight line. More mundane problems through ignoring this measurement can range
from wheels that foul parts of the bodywork or suspension, to high-speed judder in the
steering because the suspension setup can't handle that particular type of wheel. This
figure will be stamped on the wheel somewhere as an ET figure.
Inset and outset are subsets of offset and the relationship is this : positive offset = inset.
Negative offset = outset. Typically you can get away with 5mm-7mm difference from the
vehicle manufacturer specification before you'll run into trouble with the wheels fouling
the suspension or bodywork. So for example if your stock wheels have an offset of
42mm and you can only find replacements with a 40mm offset, that 2mm
difference ought to OK.
No offset Inset wheel Outset wheel
 More inset = closer to the suspension?
It may sound counterintuitive, but when you increase the inset of a wheel,
you decrease the clearance between the inner edge of the wheel and the suspension
components. In the example here, the red wheel has a larger inset - ie. the distance
from the mounting face to the centreline of the wheel is larger than that of the green
wheel. The grey blocks indicate a stylised mounting hub, axle and suspension
component. You can see that by increasing the inset (positive offset) of the wheel, it
pushes the inner edge of the wheel and tyre closer to the suspension. Conversely,
decreasing the inset moves the wheel and tyre closer to the outside of the vehicle where
it might scrub and rub against the bodywork and wheel arches. It might help to think of
this more in terms of overall offset rather than inset and outset. The most positive the
offset, the more the wheel is tucked into the car. The more negative the offset, the more
the wheel sticks out.

A real example
They say a picture is equivalent to a thousand words, so study this one carefully. It's one
 of the alloy wheels off one of my old cars. Enlarged so you can read it is the wheel
information described above. You'll notice it reads "6J x 14 H2 ET45". The "6J x 14" part
of that is the size of the wheel rim - in this case it has a depth of 6 inches and a diameter
of 14 inches (see the section directly below here on wheel sizes for a more in-depth
explanation). The "J" symbolises the shape of the tyre bead profile. (see rim
contours below)
The "H2" means that this wheel rim is a double hump design (see hump profiles, below).
The "ET45" figure below that though symbolises that these wheels have a positive offset
of 45mm. In other words, they have an inset of 45mm. In my case, the info is all
stamped on the outside face of the wheel which made it nice and easy to photograph
and explain for you. On most aftermarket wheels, they don't want to pollute the lines and
style of the outside of the wheel with stamped-on information - it's more likely to be
found inside the rim, or on one of the inner mounting surfaces.
Trivia note: ET comes from "Einpresstiefe" in German - rim offset (actually "inset",
literally).
THE WHEEL OFFSET CALCULATOR

This little javascript will help you to understand the different between your old and new
wheel and tyre combination in terms of the offset and how it's going to affect the overall
lateral position of the wheel and tyre. Technically you can do this calculation with either
the wheel width in inches or the tyre section in mm. I chose to use the tyre section
instead of the wheel width because in almost every case, the tyre extends beyond the
wheel rim so it's the widest part of the wheel and tyre combo. So whilst calculating the
clearance just with the wheel might show no interference between the suspension or
bodywork and the wheel, once a tyre is added, it could interfere as the tyre is wider.

Current wheel/tyre New wheel/tyre

Tyre Section: Tyre Section:
Wheel offset: Wheel offset:
215 235

42 38

MATCHING YOUR TYRES TO YOUR WHEELS

Okay. This is a biggie so take a break, get a hot cup of Java, relax and then when you
think you're ready to handle the complexities of tyre matching, carry on. This diagram
should help you to figure out what's going on.

WHEEL SIZES

Wheel sizes are expressed as WWWxDDD sizes. For example 7x14. A 7x14 wheel is
has a rim width of 7 inches, and a rim diameter of 14 inches. The width is usually below
the width of the tyre for a good match. So a 185mm tyre would usually be matched to a
wheel which is 6 inches wide. (185mm is more like 7 inches, but that's across the entire
tyre width, not the bead area where the tyre fits the rim.)
STATIC LOADED RADIUS, OUTER DIAMETER AND ROLLING
CIRCUMFERENCE

These three measurements are all important to consider when talking about wheels and
tyres. They're all interlinked. Straight from the manufacturer, a tyre is circular and
it's outer diameter (OD) is based on this unladen, perfectly circular condition. Because
tyres deform under load (flatter on the bottom than they are on the top when taking the
weight of a car), the vertical radius of a tyre under load is not half the diameter. It's
typically about 44% of it (from the centre of the wheel to the road). In addition, a tyre
doesn't roll like a solid wheel; the steel or fabric belt 'rolls along the ground' like a
caterpillar tank tread does. Because of this, the rolling circumference of the tyre isn't
quite what you'd expect. The closest approximation for this value can be calculated by
taking the outer diameter, subtracting twice the tread depth and multiplying by PI.
Roughly speaking, that's 0.96 x OD x PI.
Now why is this magical value so important? If the rolling circumference changes
because you've mismatched your new wheels and tyres, then your speedo will lose
accuracy and the fuel consumption might go up. The latter reason is because the
manufacturer built the engine/gearbox combo for a specific rolling circumference. Mess
with this and the whole thing could start to fall down around you.
J, JJ, K, JK, B, P AND D : TYRE BEAD PROFILES / RIM CONTOUR
DESIGNATIONS.

No, my keyboard letters weren't stuck down when I typed this. The letter that typically
sits between the rim width and diameter figures stamped on the wheel, and indicates
the physical shape of the wheel where the tyre bead meets it. In the cross-section on
the left you can see the area highlighted in red.
Like so many topics, the answer as to which letter represents which profile is a long and
complicated one. Common wisdom has it that the letter represents the shape. ie. "J"
means the bead profile is the shape of the letter "J". Not so, although "J" is the most
common profile identifier. 4x4 vehicles often have "JJ" wheels. Jaguar vehicles
(especially older ones) have "K" profile wheels. Some of the very old VW Beetles had
"P" and "B" profile wheels.
Anyway the reason it is an "awkward topic to find definitive data on" is very apparent if
you've ever looked at Standards Manual of the European Tyre and Rim Technical
Organisation. It is extremely hard to follow! There are pages and pages (64 in total) on
wheel contours and bead profiles alone, including dimensions for every type of wheel
you can think of (and many you can't) with at least a dozen tabled dimensions for each.
Casually looking through the manual is enough to send you to sleep. Looking at it with
some concentration is enough to make your brain run out of your ears. To try to boil it all
down for you, it seems that they divide up the rim into different sections and have
various codes to describe the geometry of each area. For example, the "J" code makes
up the "Rim Contour" and specifies rim contour dimensions in a single category of rims
called "Code 10 to 26 on 5deg. Drop-Centre Rims". To give you some idea of just how
complex / anal this process is, I've recreated one such diagram with Photoshop here to
try to put you off the scent.
From the tables present in this manual, the difference in dimensions between "J" and
"B" rims is mainly due to the shape of the rim flange. This is the part in the diagram
defined by the R radius and B and P min parameters. Hence my somewhat simpler
description : tyre bead profiles.
Note that in my example, the difference between "J" and "B" rims is small but not
negligible. This area of rim-to-tyre interface is very critical. Very small changes in a
tyre's bead profile make large differences in mounting pressures and rim slip.
"A" and "D" contour designations come under the category of "Cycles, Motorcycles, and
Scooters" but also show up in the "Industrial Vehicles and Lift Trucks" category.
Naturally, the contours have completely different geometry for the same designation in
two different categories.
The "S", "T", "V" and "W" contour designation codes fall into the "Commercial Vehicles,
Flat Base Rims" category. The "E", "F", "G" and "H" codes fall into the "Commercial
Vehicles, Semi-Drop Centre Rims" category. Are you beginning to see just how complex
this all is?

I think the best thing for you, dear reader, is a general rule-of-thumb, and it is this : if
your wheels are stamped 5J15 and you buy 5K15 tyres, rest assured they absolutely
won't fit.

H, H2, FH, CH, EH AND EH2 : HUMP PROFILES.

More alphabet soup. So you might have just about understood the bit about bead
profiles, but there's another design feature of wheel rims. The 'hump' is actually a bump
put on the bead seat (for the bead) to prevent the tyre from sliding off the rim while the
vehicle is moving. As with rim contours, there are several different designations of hump
design and configuration, depending on the number and shape of the humps. For the
inquisitive reader, here's a table of the hump designations, and a diagram similar to the
one above which displays in nauseating detail just what a hump really is. The eagle-
eyed amongst you (or those paying attention) will notice that this diagram is an enlarged
view of the area around Pmin in the other ETRTO diagram above, because that's typically
where the hump is.

Bead Seat Contour

Designation Outside Inside Marking

Hump Hump Normal H

Double Hump Hump Hump H2

Flat Hump Flat Hump Normal FH

Double Flat Hump Flat Hump Flat Hump FH2

Combination Hump Flat Hump Hump CH

Extended Hump Extended Hump Extended Hump EH2

Extended Hump 2+ Extended Hump 2+ Extended Hump 2+ EH2 +

If you're obsessive-compulsive and absolutely must know everything there is to know
about bead profiles, humps and rim flanges, you can check out the ETRTO (European
Tyre and Rim Technical Organisation website from where you can purchase their
manuals and documents. Go nuts. Meanwhile, the rest of us will move on to the next
topic.

Like the site? The page you're reading is free, but if you like what you see and feel you've
learned something, a small donation to help pay down my car loan would be appreciated.
Thank you.

WHY WOULD I WANT TO CHANGE WHEELS

AND TYRES ANYWAY?
A good question. Styling and performance are the only two reasons. Most cars come
with horrible narrow little tyres and 13 inch rims. More recently the manufacturers have
come to their senses and started putting decent combinations on factory cars so that's
not so much of a problem any more. The first reason is performance. Speed in
corners more specifically. If you have larger rims, you get smaller sidewalls on the tyres.
And if you have smaller sidewalls, the tyre deforms less under the immense sideways
forces involved in cornering.

SO HOW DOES IT ALL FIGURE OUT?

Point to note: 1 inch = 25.4mm. You need to know that because tyre/wheel
manufacturers insist on mixing mm and inches in their ratings.

Lets take an average example: a car with factory fitted 6x14 wheels and 185/65 R14's
on them.

Diameter of wheel in mm = 14*25.4 = 355.6mm

 Section height = 65% of 185mm = 120.25mm
Outer diameter of the unladen tyre = (wheel diameter) + 2(section height) =
355.6mm + 2x120.25mm = 596.1mm
Approximate rolling circumference (remember - not static loaded radius - see rolling
circumference above) is 0.96 x OD x PI = 0.96 x 596.1mm x PI = 1797.79mm

In other words, for one rotation of the wheel, the car will travel about 1798mm along the
ground - about 1.8m. With me so far?
Good. Now lets assume I want some 7x15 rims which are slightly wider. A good tyre
size for those would be 205/50 R15. (see the section below on aspect ratio to
understand why). Do the same calculation again:

Diameter of wheel in mm = 15*25.4 = 381mm

Section height = 50% of 205mm = 102.5mm
Outer diameter of the unladen tyre = (wheel diameter) + 2(section height) = 381mm
+ 2x102.5mm = 586mm
Approximate rolling circumference is 0.96 x OD x PI = 0.96 x 586mm x PI
=1767.33mm

Look at the difference from the original tyre and wheel combo to the new one.
1797.79mm versus 1767.33mm. The new combo gives a rolling circumference that is
1.69% less than the original. In the world of wheels and tyres, that's good. You should
aim to be within 3% when changing wheels and tyres.

A TYRE SIZE CALCULATOR.

Well if all that maths seems a little beyond you, and judging by the volume of e-mails I
get on this subject, it might well be, I've made a little Javascript application below to help
you out. Select the tyre size you currently have, and then the size you're interested in.
Calculate each tyre size and then click on the click to calculate the difference button. It
will show you all therolling circumferences (ie. including the 96% calculation from static
laden radius above), percentage differences and even speedometer error. Enjoy.
 Current wheel/tyre New wheel/tyre
/ /
185 205

R R
65 50

14 15

Current rolling circumference New rolling circumference

mm mm

Difference in circumference: mm or %

So when your speedo reads 70mph, you're actually travelling at mph

A SPEEDOMETER ERROR MEANS AN ODOMETER ERROR TOO.

It stands to reason that if you change the rolling circumference of your wheels and tyres,
and the speedometer no longer reads correctly, that your odometer will also gradually
become inaccurate. Assume for example that you bought a car brand new and changed
the wheels and tyres on day one from 185.65R14 to 205/50R15 - not an uncommon
change. By the calculator above, that makes your speedometer over read by 1.7%.
Consequently, the registered odometer reading will also be out by the same value. So
for example, when you get to 10,000km of driving (in the real world), your odometer will
actually read 10,170km. OK so that's not a huge difference but it is one of the reasons
why most car dealers have a disclaimer on their secondhand vehicles telling you that
they won't guarantee the displayed mileage. ("Clocking" the odometer is the other
reason). Odometer errors due to mis-matched tyres and wheels will happen on regular
odometers as well as the newer digital ones.

A QUICK WORD ABOUT MOTORCYCLE SPEEDOMETERS.

Veering off-topic for a moment, it's worth pointing out that without exception, all
motorbike speedometers are designed to inflate the ego of the rider by at least 5%. In
some cases, they are are much as 10% optimistic. ie. the speedometer on a motorbike
will always over-read. 100mph? Not likely - you're actually doing closer to 90mph.
ASPECT RATIO AND RIM / PAN WIDTH.

Aspect ratio is, as you know if you read the bit above, the ratio of the tyre's section
height to its section width. The aspect ratio is sometimes referred to as the tyre 'series'.
So a 50-series tyre means one with an aspect ratio of 50%. The maths is pretty simple
and the resulting figure is stamped on all tyres as part of the sizing information:
Aspect ratio = (section height) / (section width)
The actual dimensions of a tyre depend on the rim on which it is mounted. The biggest
variable is the tyre's section width; a change of about 0.2" for every 0.5" change in rim
width.

The ratio between the section width and the rim width is pretty important. If the rim width
is too narrow, you pinch the tyre in and cause it to balloon more in cross-section. If the
rim width is too wide, you run the risk of the tyre ripping away at high speed.

For 50-series tyres and above, the rim width is 70% of the tyre's section width, rounded
off to the nearest 0.5.

For example, a 255/50R16 tyre, has a design section width of 10.04" (255mm = 10.04
inches). 70% of 10.04" is 7.028", which rounded to the nearest half inch, is 7". Ideally
then, a 255/50R16 tyres should be mounted on a 7x16 rim.

For 45-series tyres and below, the rim width is 85% of the tyre's section width, rounded
off to the nearest 0.5.
For example, a 255/45R17 tyre, still has a design section width of 10.04" (255mm =
10.04 inches). But 85% of 10.04" is 8.534", which rounded to the nearest half inch, is
8.5". Ideally then, a 255/45R17 tyre should be mounted on an 8x17 rim.

Sources: ETRTO Design manual. Yokohama Tyres

AN IDEAL RIM-WIDTH CALCULATOR

Blimey I'm good to you. Can't figure that maths out either? Click away my friend and
Chris's Rimwidthulatortm will tell you what you need to know. Obvious disclaimer : the
results should be verified with the tyre dealership/manufacturer.

Your tyre size: / R

185 65

x up to x
14

TOO WIDE OR TOO NARROW - DOES IT MAKE A DIFFERENCE?

Given all the information above, you ought to know one last thing.
A rim that is too narrow in relation to the tyre width will allow the tyre to distort
excessively sideways under fast cornering. On the other hand, unduly wide rims on an
ordinary car tend to give rather a harsh ride because the sidewalls have not got enough
curvature to make them flex over bumps and potholes. That's why there is a range of
rim sizes for each tyre size in my Rimwidthulator above. Put a 185/65R14 tyre on a rim
narrower than 5inches or wider than 6.5inches and suffer the consequences.

THE PLUS ONE CONCEPT

The plus one concept describes the proper sizing up of a wheel and tyre combo without
all that spiel I've gone through above. Basically, each time you add 1 inch to the wheel
diameter, add 20mm to the tyre width and subtract 10% from the aspect ratio. This
compensates nicely for the increases in rim width that generally accompany increases
in diameter too. By using a larger diameter wheel with a lower profile tyre it's possible to
properly maintain the overall rolling circumference, keeping odometer and speedometer
changes negligible. By using a tyre with a shorter sidewall, you gain quickness in
steering response and better lateral stability. The visual appeal is obvious, most wheels
look better than the sidewall of the tyre, so the more wheel and less sidewall there is,
the better it looks.

TYRE SIZE TABLE UP TO 17" WHEELS

Here, for those of you who can't or won't calculate your tyre size, is a table of equivalent
tyres. These all give rolling circumferences within a few mm of each other and would
mostly be acceptable, depending on the wheel rim size you're after.

80 75 70 65 60 55 50
SERIES SERIES SERIES SERIES SERIES SERIES SERIES

135/80 R 145/70 R 175/60 R

13 - 13 - 13 - -

155/70 R 165/65 R
- - 13 13 - - -

175/65 R
- - - 13 - - -

145/80 R 155/70 R 175/65 R 185/60 R 185/55 R

13 - 13 13 13 14 -

165/70 R 165/65 R 175/60 R

- - 13 14 14 - -

175/70 R
- - 13 - - - -
155/80 R 165/75 R 175/70 R 165/65 R 175/60 R 195/55 R 195/50 R
13 13 13 14 14 14 15

185/70 R 175/65 R 185/60 R 185/55 R

- - 13 14 14 15 -

165/70 R 195/60 R
- - 14 - 14 - -

165/80 R 185/70 R 175/65 R 195/60 R 205/55 R 205/50 R

13 - 13 14 14 14 15

165/70 R 185/65 R 205/60 R 185/55 R 195/50 R

- - 13 14 14 15 16

175/70 195/55 R
- - R14 - - 15 -

205/55
- - - - - R15 -

175/80 R 175/75 R 175/70 R 185/65 R 205/60 R 195/55 R 215/50 R

13 14 14 14 14 15 16

185/70 R 195/65 R 215/60 R 205/55 R 195/50 R

- - 14 14 14 15 16

185/65 R 195/60 R 205/50 R

- - - 15 15 - 16

185/80 R 185/75 R 185/70 R 195/65 R 215/60 R 205/55 R 205/50 R

13 14 14 14 14 16 16

195/70 R 185/65 R 225/60 R 225/50 R

- - 14 15 14 - 16

195/65 R 195/60 R 205/50 R

- - - 15 15 - 17

205/60 R
- - - - 15 - -

- - - - 215/60 R - -
 15

SO THAT'S IT THEN?

Yes - that's it. A little time with a calculator, a pen and some paper will enable to you
confidently stride into your local tyre/wheel supplier and state exactly what you want.

A CASE STUDY TO HELP YOU OUT

Lead by example - that's a good motto. My Case Study will walk you through the entire
process of selecting a new set of wheels and tyres so you can get an idea of what is
involved.

OVERSIZING TYRES
If you want the fat look but don't want to go bonkers with new wheels, you can oversize
the tyres on the rims usually by about 20mm (to be safe). So if your standard tyres are
185/60 R14s, you can oversize them to about 205mm. But make sure you recalculate
the percentage value to keep the sidewall height the same.

FITMENT GUIDES
Rochford Tyres has an excellent fitment guide page where
they list a ton of combinations and permutations of wheels and tyres for all the popular
makes and models. The guide is designed to give you an idea of wheel and tyre sizes
that will keep you close to spec for rolling circumference. Use the 'Alloy Wheel Search'
box at the top-left of their site. As an added bonus, if you decide to buy anything from
them, use the at the checkout to get 5% off! Sweet!

And finally, you might like to check out this little program written by Brian
Cassidy,which helps with tyre size calculation.