what's snow?

 

Grrr. [:@]

But you should see the snow tires I just got for the Subaru

 

I do apologize for my bad wording []

And sorry, I did not know you are a girl (women?). It's a kind of rare to meet a female on automotive forums, and I did not have any doubt I was talking to male - my kudos to you

You still did not provide any definition to "wheel diameter" so I will use outside/overall diameter we both have same meaning for.

First, the fact everybody probably knows: low profile tires = good handling, high profile tires = bad handling. Agree?

Second, this is exactly what I was trying to say. My bad English probably interfered (seriously). So, I’m trying to rephrase: If you decrease rim size, you have to increase tire height to keep outside/overall diameter constant. In other words, you have to install higher profile tire, hence hurting your handling. If you don’t do this, you hurt your mileage and your speedometer accuracy. Am I clear this time? All this refers to street legal cars you actually drive, not race.

Talking race/sport/cross/whatever cars is a different story. If such a car has been built as a racecar, its tire size is already accounted for in car’s design. If it is converted from a daily driver, you either accept bad fuel economy (which is not that important for most kinds of racing), or change main gear ratio to match tire size change (and not only tire size. As far as I know, they fine-tune this ratio to every specific track in serious racing). Either way, you want as small rim as possible with as low profile tire as possible for sports car.

 

ACK! No! Not in all situations. On regular smushy street tires that holds true but not as a general statement.

 

Hmmmm.... Can you give me an example when this does not hold?

 

anything with a stiff sidewall, Falken Azenis for example, with proper tire pressure.

 

Aha, now I understand what you meant. Rephrasing, then:

lower profile Falken Azenis= better handling, than higher profile Falken Azenis.

When you compare something, you have to keep all the rest constant, this is to ensure you are comparing apples to apples, not apples to dumplings. This is the standard method of comparison, and I was assuming that you used it.

Are we on the same page now?

 

I can't even tell if you're disagreeing with me, or if you're trying to explain something because you think I don't understand. I am fully aware that when you change wheel size, you have to change tire size... my race car is my street car 6 days of the week. it has 2 sets of wheels, soon to be 3, all with different size tires. it's a street legal car that I actually drive and I actually race.

 

I think we reached an agreement finally[sm=happybounce.gif]. And yes, I was trying to explain what I thought you did not understand – because we were using different assumptions to start with, and I did not realise this.

 

ROFL, the irony.