Tires Tires

Okay... I bit the bullet and got a set of wheels -- now lets start the discusion about tires.

I will be working with 18x8 rims. What does everyone recomend as far as tires go from personal experience and what size should I run?

Here are my needs... I know that it is likely all cannot be met, but please list the pros and cons to the options you list:
-Great handling -- I'm coming from a set of 205/55/16 Michelin MXV4+ Tires, everyone has told me they are sh!t, but I actually thought they were decent ... So anything that handles better sounds good to me.
-Good life -- I don't want to replace my tires every 20k miles. What tires will last me the longest without compromising much on their stickyness and handling characteristics.
-Capability in rain -- Most of my time is spent in Los Angeles, however I spend about a month of December in Northern California where it rains alot, and also LA gets rain every once in a blue moon. I need good grip in the rain, however the majority of the time the car will be cruising on dry pavement.
-Ride Quality -- I'm not building a racecar, I still want to maintain a somewhat plush ride that retains the cars sport/luxury feel.
-Price -- This is vital, I want the best bang for my buck. I'm looking at $100 a corner give or take about 25 bucks.

Once again, thanks guys for all your help -- any advice/critisism is much appreciated, even if you feel the information is fairly insignificant. Without Turbobricks I would be clueless x10.

With wheels that big, you are gonna prob wanna go with Falkens, Toyos, or Yokohamas for best longevity of the tire. I think Kuhmos will do you justice as well. Might wanna do a froogle search as far as price. I got my tires from VulcanTire.com. I got 17x7 wheels & I paid $66 per tire. TireRack.com is a good one too.

Well, you wont find much in the ways of comfort on 18 inch wheels Heres the calculations so you speedo doesnt whack out on you.

Stock tire size 205 65 16

Thats 205mm wide by 133.25mm high by 16 inch rim. 16 inches is 406.4mm

So your total current diameter is 673 mm.

With 18 inches your rims have a 457.2 mm diam, 673-457.2 = 215mm/2 = 107.5mm should be the measurement of youre sidewall. Whatever width you choose, make sure the precentage comes up to around this

So lets say , for the look you want 225 wide, the 225 x Y= 107.5 Y= 04777. so either 225/ 45/18 or 225 50 18.
Kinda in the middle lol

Lets try 235, it would be almost exactly 235/ 45 /18

As far as tires go, yokos avs es100 are ok. A good grip/durability ratio with veeery good rain traction.

Enjoy

My first choice would be a 225/40/18 tire. That gives a pretty nice sidewall height which should give the "softest" ride on big wheels. 235/40/18 will fit the wheel, and might fit the car, but I'm not sure. My wheel/tire expertise lies in the 240 series only.

A tire with a wear rating in the 300+ range should get you the mileage you're looking for, and it will still grip pretty well. I flat out abused a set of 205/50/15 Kumho 712s with a 340 wear rating and still got 18-20k on a set that I bought used with 3k on them. Since the 18" tire is larger, it should wear more slowly as it will do fewer revolutions per mile than my 205/50s did. Look for something in the 280-340 range.

Check tirerack, search by size, then sort by price. Also check discounttiredirect.com (tires.com) since they have Falken and Hankook which tirerack doesn't carry. Make a list of possible candidates and try to narrow it down.

phillazenby740t said:

Stock tire size 205 65 16

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There's no way the stock tires are ~26.5" tall. That can't be right...can it?

225 40 will be too short. Your speedo gauge will read higher than true speed and you will rev higher than necessary on the highway (Bad fuel mileage, and incresed mileage accumulation on the car.

To effectively run 40 you would need at least 245 wide, preferably 255.

Then again, if you dont mind the adverse effects, smaller tires will give you better acceleration my emulating shorter gears.

phillazenby740t said:

225 40 will be too short. Your speedo gauge will read higher than true speed and you will rev higher than necessary on the highway (Bad fuel mileage, and incresed mileage accumulation on the car.

To effectively run 40 you would need at least 245 wide, preferably 255.

Then again, if you dont mind the adverse effects, smaller tires will give you better acceleration my emulating shorter gears.

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He's running 205/55/16 right now. I think that is closer to the stock size. 225/40/18 is taller than what he has now. 225/50/18 or 235/45/18 is crazy tall, and on an 8" wheel, will give problems with rubbing. I don't care about fuel mileage or higher mileage accumulation when my tires are grinding into my fenders.

Thanks for the quick replies so far. My understanding is that 235s will rub, so I'm thinking 225/40/18s. This calculator has been very helpful for me in the past: http://www.miata.net/garage/tirecalc.html

//Edit: The 205/55/16s I am running right now are almost dead on with the speedo -- It starts to go off by less that 2 mph @ 70mph according to my GPS.

225/40/18 on my 960, 225/40/18 on my brothers R. That's what Gary Allison at Ronal recommended, so I went with that. Not much to compare it to, but I'm happy with what I got. Also, they are the same size as stock wheels, I don't know where some of the above math is coming from.

I'd also check into / consider higher end Continental tires. Most of them grip really well and last quite a while not to mention are OE on many performance european vehicles such as Mercedes and BMW's. Although obviously a significant difference in sizes, I've also had good experiences with certain Yokos (If you consider the ES100's though, they are really soft and wear prematurely though). I run Conti ProContacts now and they've also been really good tires, great grip, lifespan, ride, traction wet and dry. I'm not sure about the sizes though. Just something to maybe look into.

the poi said:

225/40/18 on my 960, 225/40/18 on my brothers R. That's what Gary Allison at Ronal recommended, so I went with that. Not much to compare it to, but I'm happy with what I got. Also, they are the same size as stock wheels, I don't know where some of the above math is coming from.

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Chris, how do your Kumho MX's deal with the rare instances of rain in LA?

I guess I'll be the one to throw the wildcard . I don't have any experience with the certain tire but i have the same brand on my car an they were $80 a piece and are amazing IMO. Fulda Carat Exelero. Don't hear too many people talking about them, but i love the ones i have on my 940. and they do have a 225/40 18

towerymt said:

235/40/18 will fit the wheel, and might fit the car, but I'm not sure.

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Fitting the car will be iffy. I have pics on my Gir thread, and the rears are just a tad too wide at the lower offset that I have.

-- Kane ... I think it netted out to ET15 ... ET25 or so would have been better for the rears with such a tire width. Didn't bother trying the fronts at all yet, still.

Gian, I personally have Sumitomo HTR ZII's in 215/45-17. i love them, and have been running them for 1 track day, 2 autocrosses, and 15000 miles, and have not really noticed any excessive wear or loss of performance. tirerack has em for 89 each, but their treadwear rating is only 220 iirc, so they'd still wear out generally quicker than something with a higher number treadwear.

stay away from all seasons, IMO. you live in Cali, bro. be thankful!

BFG Gforce sports are great, but at 121 from tirerack, almost out of your budget. in my experience with them (205/40-17 on a jetta) they are great in the rain, and still very good in the dry. Avon tech M500s are sweet too, 117 each

DoubleV said:

Chris, how do your Kumho MX's deal with the rare instances of rain in LA?

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never a problem. i don't think i ever drove them in rain though, jsut the occasional puddle

my buddies and i have put quite a few tires on VWs, and so far on a larger wheel the Bridgestone Formenza (I think that's it) was the best, however not the easiest on the wallet. Kuhmos were by far the worst, and Pirelli SO3s are cool because of the dual compound design, so they're always just as grippy no matter how worn down they are. If you really want to go extreme just buy a set of Falken Azena Sports, they'll only last you about 5,000 miles at the most, but the grip is so uncanny that it feels like it's riding on rails, especally when you get the heat cycle starting, you can pull off little gobs of rubber just like a race tire.

great tires

You can have uncanny dry grip like the Falken tires and fantastic grip in the rain but you give up the longer tire life. I've experienced this with Bridgestone Potenza S03 tires. They lasted me three summers using them for one autocross and lots of out of alignment hard driving. Probably about 25-30k miles total. I'm happy with that. Expensive, hell yessss but you get what you pay for. I'd lean toward having grip and performance that can save my life rather than have tires that last a long time. For the last two summers I've been using Kumho Ecsta 711 or 712 tires and while good for the money they pale in comparision to the Bridgestone performance tires.

Awesome! What are the offset of the new wheels? 225s will do you dandy... I'm quite confident that 225/40s will be your ticket. They're barely larger than stock diameter, and not too wide to cause problems. You might be able to get away with 235/45s, but I'd say you should get some confirmation on that from someone else who's run them. Knowing the offset of the new wheels should help with decision making as well.

Quoting Mike because I agree with him and also suggest doing the searches he mentions... Come back with what you find and we'll help you nit pick through it further.

towerymt said:

My first choice would be a 225/40/18 tire. That gives a pretty nice sidewall height which should give the "softest" ride on big wheels. 235/40/18 will fit the wheel, and might fit the car, but I'm not sure. My wheel/tire expertise lies in the 240 series only.

A tire with a wear rating in the 300+ range should get you the mileage you're looking for, and it will still grip pretty well. I flat out abused a set of 205/50/15 Kumho 712s with a 340 wear rating and still got 18-20k on a set that I bought used with 3k on them. Since the 18" tire is larger, it should wear more slowly as it will do fewer revolutions per mile than my 205/50s did. Look for something in the 280-340 range.

Check tirerack, search by size, then sort by price. Also check discounttiredirect.com (tires.com) since they have Falken and Hankook which tirerack doesn't carry. Make a list of possible candidates and try to narrow it down.

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In the meantime:

HTR Z 2s are good, but getting a decent bit old and are probably more sporty than you're looking for, IMO...

Continental tires will have nothing you're interested in for your price range.

Kuhmo just came out with some newer tires called the SPT, I'm not sure what they cost, but I think they'd fit what you'd want. The MXs are older, but they're supposted to be a higher performance tire than the SPTs which means that they will ride worse, wear quicker, and not be as good in the rain(not that they're really bad to begin with). Their older 711 and 712 tires are getting quite old in the tooth, that's why they're so cheap. 711s can be considered decent to some, but others have reported quality issues, and the fact that they're, what, 10 year old technology or something? Not great. Not a classy tire for a classy ride. I'm not sure they're offered in this size anyway. 712s are a step up in performance and are a bit of a younger design, but there's better out there these days for close to the same price, if not even cheaper.

Potenza SO3s I've NEVER heard anything bad about, and are great tires, period. Maybe a bit more sporting and out of your price range though?

BFG Sports are great tires for the money.

Something new that has me very intruiged by the reviews and test results are the GENERAL(!?!?) Exclaim UHP tires... I'd definitely give those a good looking into...

That's all I can think of basically off the top of my head... I love helping out with these kinds of things. Hopefully some day I'll be able to buy tires for at least one of my cars again. I've been getting wheels with tires on them already for the past 4 years... I've only bought one set of tires for myself so far.

And here's this just for reference:

Just a guestimated wheel offset... Also remember that being on a 8" wheel the actual tire width may very well be wider than stated, and the largest factor is specifically which tire you buy, as all tires are not created equal. One brand and model's tread width for a 205 may be as wide as one for another brand and model's 225!

Ummm ... pretty much +1 on what Kyle just said.

-- Kane ... you've come a long ways since you started out on BB.