Wheel/Tyre Widths
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stevieturbo
- Forum Contributor
- Posts: 4054
- Joined: Sat Nov 18, 2006 6:22 pm
- Location: Northern Ireland
The trouble with tyres is that there are so many factors that impact upon their perfomance and it seems to me that not all tyres work well on all cars.
I had good experiences with Avon ZZ3's on my 230hp Saab, but everyone told me that Eagle F1's were "better", so I swapped to them and they were nowhere near as good, with reduced grip in both rotational grip, so acceleration was impaired, and angular grip, so understeer was increased. I went back to Avon's once the Eagles had worn out and was very glad of it.
When I bought my 360hp Cerbera I inherited fairly new RE040's (IIRC) on the rear and some kind of unidirectional tyre on the front, I forget which, but they were rubbish with very little rear end grip, worrying oversteer and downright terrifying wet weather performance. I once had to drive back from Melton to Ashby (around 30 miles) at night in heavy rain and when I got home I was physically exhausted. The next day I started looking for new tyres. A lot of Cerb owners were saying good things about Falken FK452's, so I had some of those put on and the difference was notable and even when they were worn enough to require changing for the MOT they still had better grip than the original tyres, giving me the confidence to actually use the throttle.
Then, when I got my 400hp S-Type R, it had worn tyres (Pirelli's, standard Jaguar fit) and needed a change, so I swapped to the Falkens assuming that because they were good on the Cerb they would be good on the Jag... and they were godawful, lighting up at the lightest touch, making pulling out of busy junctions a right PITA as the tyres span and the TC kicked in, although front grip was adequate.
Once they were worn I looked around and opted to give Vredstein Ultrac Sessanta's a go, and they suited the car much better than the Falkens, making the car a real pleasure to drive.
Ok, so it's not a scientific approach and, as we're not all rich folk here, swapping tyres on our own cars will usually mean going from worn to new, so grip levels will probably seem better anyway even if long term performance is actually worse, but while the Falkens worked very well throughout their lifecycle on the Cerb, they were immediately worse than worn tyres on the Jag, and the Eagles were a total let down on the Saab, producing a noticable reduction in grip from start to finish.
I had good experiences with Avon ZZ3's on my 230hp Saab, but everyone told me that Eagle F1's were "better", so I swapped to them and they were nowhere near as good, with reduced grip in both rotational grip, so acceleration was impaired, and angular grip, so understeer was increased. I went back to Avon's once the Eagles had worn out and was very glad of it.
When I bought my 360hp Cerbera I inherited fairly new RE040's (IIRC) on the rear and some kind of unidirectional tyre on the front, I forget which, but they were rubbish with very little rear end grip, worrying oversteer and downright terrifying wet weather performance. I once had to drive back from Melton to Ashby (around 30 miles) at night in heavy rain and when I got home I was physically exhausted. The next day I started looking for new tyres. A lot of Cerb owners were saying good things about Falken FK452's, so I had some of those put on and the difference was notable and even when they were worn enough to require changing for the MOT they still had better grip than the original tyres, giving me the confidence to actually use the throttle.
Then, when I got my 400hp S-Type R, it had worn tyres (Pirelli's, standard Jaguar fit) and needed a change, so I swapped to the Falkens assuming that because they were good on the Cerb they would be good on the Jag... and they were godawful, lighting up at the lightest touch, making pulling out of busy junctions a right PITA as the tyres span and the TC kicked in, although front grip was adequate.
Once they were worn I looked around and opted to give Vredstein Ultrac Sessanta's a go, and they suited the car much better than the Falkens, making the car a real pleasure to drive.
Ok, so it's not a scientific approach and, as we're not all rich folk here, swapping tyres on our own cars will usually mean going from worn to new, so grip levels will probably seem better anyway even if long term performance is actually worse, but while the Falkens worked very well throughout their lifecycle on the Cerb, they were immediately worse than worn tyres on the Jag, and the Eagles were a total let down on the Saab, producing a noticable reduction in grip from start to finish.
