If you’re getting winter tires, buy a complete set with rims so you don’t have to mount and balance everything each fall and spring. “Two-wheel drive with winter tires beats all-wheel drive on all-seasons all day long.” Tire-inflation goop can get you home and thence to the shop for a new tire or a more permanent repair. That stuff works, at least for the kind of punctures that are repairable. You could always choose an option that’s becoming increasingly common from OEMs, which is to use non-run-flat tires and just carry a tire repair kit, which is basically a can of Fix-A-Flat. (That’s because of their super-stiff sidewalls, which have to be robust enough to enable driving when the tire is deflated.) But that’s not necessarily the case, even though your run-flat car won’t have a spare. You might think that if your car came from the factory with run-flat tires, you have to replace them with run-flat tires, which might be more expensive and almost always offer a harsher ride than non-run-flats. Plus, you might bend those wheels a lot more easily, given that a thin sidewall won’t offer much protection from potholes or inadvertent brushes with the curb. That’s because huge wheels and thin tires probably weigh more than modest wheels and tires with more sidewall, and adding rotational mass to your wheel and tire are horrible for performance.
Just remember that those rubber-band sidewalls might look cool but could actually hurt your car’s performance, after a point. That’s the general rule: If you drop aspect ratio by 10, you increase wheel diameter by one inch.
COMPARE TIRES UPGRADE
So, if, say, you want to go from a 205/60/16 tire (where 205 is the width in millimeters, 60 is the aspect ratio, and 16 is the inner diameter for the wheel) to a 50-profile, you’d also need to upgrade to a 17-inch wheel to maintain the same overall diameter. Otherwise, you're effectively regearing your car, as shorter tires will make your engine rev higher at a given speed, as well as causing your odometer to rack up the miles at an accelerated rate. Which means that, if you want the low-profile look, you shouldn’t just buy new tires-you have to buy new wheels, too, in a larger size to compensate for the loss of sidewall. In practical terms, aspect ratio is the height of your sidewall, and a lower number means less sidewall. Ideally, if you live in a cold climate, you’ll have two sets of tires-winter and everything else. But they won’t be useless in either context, either. They won’t have the grip of a summer or three-season tire when it’s warm out, and they definitely won’t have the traction of a winter tire in the snow. If you just want to mount one set of tires and forget about it, then get all-seasons. Jack of all trades, master of none, all-season tires are okay at everything but not particularly great at anything. Are All-Season Tires Really Good for All Seasons? So: Take treadwear ratings with a large grain of salt. Why? Because they don’t want people getting mad when their tires don’t last 120,000 miles. For instance, Michelin’s LTX A/T2 scored more than 1,800 on the UTQG test. How much it’s understated and why is up to them, but you can figure that each company looks at everybody else’s numbers for competitive tires and pegs their rating to that ballpark. Take treadwear ratings with a large grain of salt.Īnd while manufacturers can’t overstate their rating, they are allowed to understate it.
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