Something to also consider is that bigger tires are usually more expensive. Photo: FCA. This will increase handling performance for spirited driving and cornering. This means that you will most likely experience a bumpier ride. If your wheel and tire package ends up being heavier, this will affect acceleration and fuel economy.
Acceleration will be less and so will fuel economy. Steering may also become heavier. Wider wheels mean wider tires which mean extra grip. However, again this could be a case of extra weight unless you get lightweight rims and extra strain on your vehicle. Go too wide and wheel bearings will not be happy! Picking up a spare set of wheels and tires to use during the summer or winter is popular in colder climates as well.
Bigger is not always better. There's a sizing sweet spot that provides better grip and those head-turning looks without compromising your vehicle's original engineering. So, let's get some basics down before you upgrade to new rolling stock. The first known wheels were made of wood, despite what Fred Flintstone's granite-shod convertible would have you believe. Automobiles even used wooden carriage wheels for quite a while. Increased power and weight soon outstripped wood's capabilities, and wheels were upgraded to steel, either in a stamped, welded dish or a lighter hub, spoke and rim design.
Lightweight steel-spoked wheels lingered until the s, especially on nimble foreign sports cars, but larger American cars needed the stronger stamped and welded wheels. Steel's weight penalty led racers and enthusiasts to explore magnesium—a metal as strong as aluminum, but even lighter. Unfortunately, pure magnesium corrodes very easily unless it's properly sealed and can even catch fire in an accident. Magnesium wheel fires are still singled out in firefighting courses today, as taking a water hose to a burning magnesium wheel only makes it burn more intensely.
Beyond these alloys, there are now ultra-lightweight carbon-fiber wheels, but those are still far more expensive than an alloy set. For now, most wheel upgrades involve aluminum alloys. One of the reasons why people opt for larger wheels and tires revolves around the contact patch—specifically, how much tire touches the ground at any given time.
There are two ways to increase the size of the tire's contact patch: make it longer or wider. A longer patch of tire tread means that the tire's overall diameter increases. The tire can rub other parts of the car, like the wheel well. Problem is, it takes longer for a larger diameter tire to complete one rotation. Your 4. You may not notice this until you hammer the brakes going into a slippery corner and slide off into a hedge. So, on street cars, we customarily go wider with wheels and tires to increase the size of that contact patch.
That allows a wider tire to be mounted. Then you can fit a tire with a wider tread and a lower profile for better handling. Thanks to the lower profile, the overall diameter of your wheel and tire combo stays pretty close to what it was before. However, bigger tires also mean bigger price tags , according to Consumer Reports. Try to find the best balance between size and your budget.
If you opt for larger wheels when you purchase your vehicle, you may not see this rise in price at first, but when you have to replace the larger wheels and tires, you will have a higher cost of replacement than someone driving a vehicle with smaller wheels.
Once you choose a tire size for your vehicle, you'll want to stick with that size when you buy replacements. The reason for this is that a differently sized tire can confuse your speedometer and even cause damage to your vehicle's anti-lock braking systems and stability system calibrations.
This applies to switching to both smaller and larger tires. Changing to larger tires with an improper sidewall height can cause damage to your vehicle's suspension system, wheels, and the tires themselves, and can run the risk of incorrect speedometer readings. However, if you match larger-diameter wheel sizes to lower-profile tire sizes, your speedometer and odometer shouldn't see any changes. This setup means your tires have shorter sidewalls, which means stiffer sidewalls, and a higher chance for blowouts should you hit a pothole.
When you replace your tires, try to stick with the same brand and size, as mixing and matching leaves your vehicle with different tire threads, which can cause spinouts and control loss. The average driver may not know exactly what they are looking for when they shop for new tires , but as long as you keep a few fundamental rules in mind, replacing tires and rims is easy.
These labels can be confusing if you're not sure how to read them, but once you learn the language of tires , they become more clear. On the left side of the slash symbol, you'll find three numbers and sometimes letters. The numbers represent how wide the tires are, in millimeters, from sidewall to sidewall. The bigger this number is, the more road the tire touches. If you see a letter on the left side, it refers to the tire type.
Letters you might see are:. On the right side of the slash symbol, you'll find two numbers, a letter, and two more numbers. The first set of numbers represents the aspect ratio of the tire's height to its width. The middle letter on the right side of the slash tells you about the tire's construction method and will most commonly be "R," or radial. This means the layers of the tire run radially across it.
The last number is important, as it tells you what size wheel the tire fits.
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