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On 8 Apr 2002, at 8:47, Bryan Castles wrote: > I have a 195 series on my stock rims... and I had a 205 on my 67 some > years ago. I have had a shop or two tell me that a 205 won't go on the > stock rim. I think that is the biggest though, assuming you can find a shop > that will work with you on it. I currently have 195's all the way around, and > they don't rub anywhere. We can consider the tires to consist of 4 segments: tread, rim, and 2 sidewalls. If we view the cross section we can see that these 4 segments make up a geometry that is essentially a parallelogram if the tire is mounted on the proper rim. The beauty of this parallelogram is that when our car corners, the side force on the tread forces it sideways but it stays parallel to its original plane. This keeps the tire contact patch constant. The standard 165mm tread is the correct width to match our 4.5" rims. If we mount a bigger tire on this same rim we now find that the parallelogram has been replaced with a trapezoid which no longer maintains the parallel contact patch with the road. Instead, it tends to lift the inside portion of the tread, reducing the contact patch at the exact moment when you could use it the most. Of course there's a range of rim widths which given tire will be happy with, but there is still an optimum and straying too far from the manufacturer's recommended rim width will make your handling worse. Clearly there's nothing here that says you can't mount a really wide tire on our rims, but I believe that you'll find that a 185mm tire is about the widest tire that anyone recommends that you use on a 4.5" rim. If you want to get the best out of wider tires you really need wider rims to match. - ******************************* Jim Adney, jadney@vwtype3.org Madison, Wisconsin, USA ******************************* ------------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe? mailto:type3-request@vwtype3.org, Subject: unsubscribe