Are you confused by your car tyres? 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.

Decoding all those tyre markings on the sidewall

Look at your car tyre. 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:

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
B 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 (190kg) up to an index of 169 (5800kg).
C Denotes type of car tyre construction.
D M&S denotes a car tyre designed for mud and snow. Reinforced marking only where 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 where the tyre was manufactured in detail. 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.

Additional markings

In addition to all of the above, here is a comprehensive list of other markings you can find
on your sidewall.

• "Star": Original tyres for BMW

• B: Bias construction, typically for motorcycles. See tyre construction below.
• BSW: Black SideWall
• C: Commercial; tyres for light trucks. Similar to LT (below)
• E4: Tyre approved according to ECE-regulations. See The E Mark below.
• FR: Flange Rib - the area above the bead of the tyre that acts as a protection for the
outer lip of your alloy wheel against light contact with kerbs etc.
• LT: Light Truck tyres.
• M0: Original tyres for Mercedes-Benz
• M+S, or M&S: Mud and Snow - see car tyre types
• Made in ...: Country of production
• N(number): Original tyres for Porsche. See Porsche N-rated tyres below.
• OWL: Outline White Lettering
• RF: Reinforced tyres
• SFI, or Inner: Side Facing Inwards; inside of asymmetric tyres. See tyre
treads below.
• SFO, or Outer: Side Facing Outwards; outside of asymmetric tyres. See tyre
treads below.
• SL: Standard Load; tyre for normal usage and loads
• TL: Tubeless
• TT: Tube-type, tyre must be used with an inner-tube
• TWI: Tread Wear Indicator.
 • WSW: White SideWall
• XL: eXtra Load; tyre for vehicles of heavier standard weights
• Arrows: Denotes rotation direction for directional tread. See tyre treads below.

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. 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 6means 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
3 means the tyre was manufactured in the30th week of 2003.

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: 2103

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.
 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?

This is the ratio of the This is the diameter

height of the tyre sidewall, This tells you that the in inchesof the rim of
This is the width in mm of
(section height), expressed tyre is a radial the wheel that the tyre
the tyre from sidewall to This is
as a percentage of the construction. Check has been designed to fit
sidewall when it's unstressed thespeed
width. It is known as out tyre on. Don't ask me why
and you're looking at it head ratingof the
the aspect ratio. In this construction if you tyre sizes mix imperial
on (or top-down). This is tyre.
case, 65% of 185mm is want to know what and metric
known as the section width.
120.25mm - the section that means. measurements. They
height. 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 Speed rating.

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 Speed rating.

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. However if 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

Equivalent standard tyre size is : /100 R

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, forradial 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.

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

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 theBMWcar 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.

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

Equivalent standard tyre size is : / R

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 though, 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.
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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 Speed Symbol
Km/h MPH 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
Z 240+ 150+

'H' rated tyres are becoming the most commonplace and widely used tyres, replacing 'S'
and 'T' ratings. Percentage-wise, the current split is something like this: S/T=67%, H=23%,
V=8%. Certain performance cars come with 'V' or 'Z' 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.
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 tyres decreases and you're in highly technical
territory the likes of which I'm not going into on this page.
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 90 600 110 106 130 190 150 335

0 0 0
51 195 71 345 91 615
111 1090 131 1950 151 3450
52 200 72 355 92 630
112 112 132 200 152 355
53 206 73 365 93 650 0 0 0

54 212 74 375 94 670 113 1150 133 2060 153 3650

 55 218 75 387 95 690 114 118 134 212 154 375
0 0 0
56 224 76 400 96 710
115 1215 135 2180 155 3875
57 230 77 412 97 730
116 125 136 224 156 400
58 236 78 425 98 750 0 0 0

59 243 79 437 99 775 117 1285 137 2300 157 4125

60 250 80 450 100 800 118 132 138 236 158 425
0 0 0
61 257 81 462 101 825
119 1360 139 2430 159 4375
62 265 82 475 102 850
120 140 140 250 160 450
63 272 83 487 103 875 0 0 0

64 280 84 500 104 900 121 1450 141 2575 161 4625

65 290 85 515 105 925 122 150 142 265 162 475
0 0 0
66 300 86 530 106 950
123 1550 143 2725 163 4875
67 307 87 545 107 975
124 160 144 280 164 500
68 315 88 560 108 100 0 0 0
0
69 325 89 580 125 1650 145 2900 165 5150
109 1030
126 170 146 300 166 530
0 0 0

127 1750 147 3075 167 5450

128 180 148 315 168 560

0 0 0

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:
"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, available on their website (PDF file).

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.

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 Yokohama specialise 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.
Unidirectional tyres must be dedicated to a specific 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.
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. This was the result:

I've sliced up the video into a short clip so you can see what happened. Download the
clip here. 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 As conditions worsen - less
At this point, the tread is
adequate tread, light water drainage, higher speed or
overwhelmed with water and
buildup and good road more rain, the amount of
is no longer effective. Water is
drainage, the tyre tread is able water on the road surface
incompressible so the tyre is
to disperse the water from the increases. The tread is only
lifted off the road and skates
road surface so that the tyre's able to disperse so much
across the surface of the
contact patch remains in good water, and begins to become
water.
contact with the road. innundated.

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.

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 Aquatread and Continental 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 systemtoo 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.

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".

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 theweight 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 lightest spot on the
wheel is found during manufacture and the heavier valve stem is then located diametrically
opposite that light spot 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.
Moving on - Wheel measurements.

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,
or Pitch 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. 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. The wheel bolts or studs are there to hold the wheel laterally on
to the axle, but they're not really designed to take vertical load - ie. they're not
designed to take the weight of the car. That's the job of the centre spigot - the part
of the axle that sticks out and pokes through the hole in the middle of the wheel. It's
the load-bearing part of the axle and the wheel, as well as being the assembly that
centres the wheel on the axle. For the most part, the centre spigot on aftermarket
alloy wheels is much larger than that of the car you want to put them on to. When
this happens, the best solution is a spigot locating ring (also called a hub-centric
ring) which is essentially a steel or hard plastic doughnut designed to fit snugly on to
your axle spigot and into the wheel spigot.

The image below shows the PCD (the red ring and mounting hole centrelines) and
the spigot size (the blue ring). The spigot hole on an alloy wheel is normally covered
up with a centre cap or cover.
• 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 below, 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 contoursbelow)
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.

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.

Current wheel/tyre New wheel/tyre

Tyre Section: Tyre Section:

Wheel offset: Wheel offset:

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.)

Rolling Radius

The important thing that you need to keep in consideration is rolling radius. This is so
devastatingly important that I'll mention it in bold again:rolling radius!. This is the
distance in mm from the centre of the wheel to the edge of the tread when it's unladen. If
this 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 radius. Mess with this
and the whole thing could start to fall down around you.
It's worth pointing out that the actual radius the manufacturers use for speedo calculation is
the 'dynamic' or the 'laden' radius of the wheel at the recommended inflation pressure and
'normal' loading. Obviously though, this value is entirely dependent on the unladen rolling
radius.
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 below 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 above diagram
defined by the R radius and B and Pmin 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

Marki
Designation
ng
Outside Inside

Hump Hump Normal H

Double Hump Hump Hump H2

Flat Hump Flat Hump Normal FH

Double Flat
Flat Hump Flat Hump FH2
Hump

Combination
Flat Hump Hump CH
Hump

Extended Extended Extended

EH2
Hump Hump Hump

Extended Extended Extended

EH2 +
Hump 2+ Hump 2+ Hump 2+
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.

Why would I want to change to alloy wheels and new 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.
Also note that a certain amount of artistic licence is required when calculating these values.
The tyre's rolling radius will change the instant you put load on it, and calculating values to
fractions of a millimetre just isn't worth it - tyre tread wear will more than see off that sort
of accuracy.

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

• Radius of wheel = 7 inches (half the diameter) = 177.8mm

• Section height = 65% of 185mm = 120.25mm
• So the rolling radius for this car to maintain is 177.8+120.25=298.05mm
With me so far? Good. Now lets assume I want 15 inch rims which are slightly wider to give
me that nice fat look. I'm after a set of 7x15's
First we need to determine the ideal width of tyre for my new wider wheels. 7 inches =
177.8mm. The closest standard tyre width to that is actually 205mm so that's what we'll
use. (remember the tyre width is larger than the width of the bead fitting.)

• Radius of wheel = 7.5 inches (half of 15) = 190.5mm

• We know that the overall rolling radius must be as close to 298.05mm as possible
• So the section height must be 298.05mm-190.5mm = 107.55mm
• Figure out what percentage of 205mm is 107.55mm. In this case it's 52.5%
• So combine the figures - the new tyre must be 205/50 R15
• ....giving a new rolling radius of 293mm - more than close enough.

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 the rolling radii, circumferences, percentage differences and even speedometer error.
Enjoy.

A Speedometer error means an odometer error too.

It stands to reason that if you change the rolling radius 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 195.65R14 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:

Section
height
Aspect
ratio =
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 8½x17 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

x up to x

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 radius, 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 radii 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 radius. 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.

Like the site? Help Chris buy a bike. The page you're reading is free, but if you like what you see and feel you've
learned something, throw me a $5 bone as a token of your appreciation. Help me buy the object of my desire.

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/cm².
By that formula, the area of your contact patch is going to be roughly 375 / 2.11 =
177.7cm² (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 177.7cm² / 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 : 177.7cm²
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 177.7cm² / 22.5, which is 7.8cm.

Imagine driving on to a glass road and looking up underneath

your tyres. This is the example contact patch (in red) for the
situation I explained above. The narrower tyre has a longer,
thinner contact patch. The fatter tyre has a shorter, wider
contact patch, but the area is the same on both.

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 do affect 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
normalised lateral 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 would create 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.

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.
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 therefor 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.

Front-wheel drive, non-

Rear-wheel drive, non unidirectional tyres
unidirectional tyres

4-wheel drive, non-unidirectional tyres Any unidirectional tyres

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. These are relatively easy to spot:

Here's a generic fault-finding table for most types of tyre wear:

Problem Cause

Under-inflation
Shoulder Wear
Repeated high-speed cornering
Both Shoulders wearing faster than the centre of the tread
Improper matching of rims and tyres
Tyres haven't been rotated recently

Centre Wear Over-inflation

The centre of the tread is wearing faster than the shoulders Improper matching of rims and tyres
Tyres haven't been rotated recently

One-sided wear Improper wheel alignment (especially

One side of the tyre wearing unusually fast camber)
Tyres haven't been rotated recently

Faulty suspension, rotating parts or

brake parts
Spot wear Dynamic imbalance of tyre/rim
A part (or a few parts) of the circumference of the tread are wearing faster assembly
than other parts. Excessive runout of tyre and rim
assembly
Sudden braking and rapid starting
Under inflation

Faulty suspension, rotating parts or

brake parts
Diagonal wear Improper wheel alignment
A part (or a few parts) of the tread are wearing diagonally faster than
other parts. Dynamic imbalance of tyre/rim
assembly
Tyres haven't been rotated recently
Under inflation
Feather-edged wear
The blocks or ribs of the tread are wearing in a feather-edge pattern Improper wheel alignment (faulty toe-
in)
 Bent axle beam

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.

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 isany 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 (20°C, 80% RH)
to nitrogen, you'll find that going up as far as 80°C 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 marginally better 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 racer who did not know the details of chemistry and physics thought that
nitrogen would be better because (insert plausible but incorrect science here) and he
started using nitrogen. He won some races and word got out that he was using nitrogen in
his tyres. Well, it is not expensive to use nitrogen in place of 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. Racing teams will also often use nitrogen inflation, but largely out of conveience
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 or anything.

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 youthink 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 with dry air, you'll get about the same benefits as you would with a nitrogen inflation
but for free.