That's modern run-flats for you. They are OK but the ride quality is terrible.
Bad morning commute
- Thread starter Yank
- Start date
It's rather hard to know now.
I wish I could get sensible rubber for mine. 225/40 x 17 is bloody silly on a saloon car. Last night I had a mate round in his little van, he had a problem and we swapped the spare out. It was a 13 or 14 x something normal on a steel rim. "Isn't it light compared to an alloy wheel?" he commented. "Why do they fit heavier wheels to cars?"
"Vanity" I replied, which resulted in my neighbour, who was unloading shopping, laughing until he dropped his groceries.
Nero
Re: Tired
That wasn't a run flat. But the car ran remarkably smoothly at 70mph after the outer rim peeled off and followed me down the motorway. Might have been a different story if it was one of the front wheels
-alan-
pfm Member
My brother and I have almost matching daysul Honda Civics at the moment. Mine is a full boy-racer spec (Type S don't you know..) but his is a standard with alloys that are an inch smaller, and correspondingly taller side-wall tyres. We swapped wheels for a while, as mine felt a bit crashy over the crappy roads we have round here, in comparison to his, which seemed to have a more compliant and ride overall. I thought the harsh ride on the 'sporty' car was down to a combination of stiffer springs, and lower profile tyres. Not so.
Turns out the crashiness moved with the wheels. My car went from feeling every bump and hole in the road even if you couldn't see them, to the point where you would often see bumps and not even be able to feel them. The change in tyres improves the ride dramatically, and also had the side effect of killing most of the irritating little rattles and squeaks you'd normally hear, helluvan improvement all round.
He rang me after a week and said I'm coming down, get those wheels of mine ready - how in the name of Jeebus do you stick that nonsense
Sue Pertwee-Tyr
Accuphase all the way down
Yep, I'm coming round to the view that anything lower than a 50% profile is unnecessary for any real world road car.
TheDecameron
Unicorns fart glitter.
It looked like something that should be coming down a narrow gauge railway doing 15mph with you hanging out of the cab smoking a pipe and pulling the steam whistle to alert cattle ahead.
How was it in such reasonable condition after what you describe? Amazing.
I know it's not a RF, it was a joke. Impressive that it carried on in a straight line after the thing had disintegrated though, I would have thought that you would have had to drive for miles to do that to a tyre.
Nero
Re: Tired
well to be fair, I was driving back from a mate, and as I set off, I did have a little flash from the traction control, which indicated something might be amiss. But best ignored eh? Might just go away. Or not. The rozzers were impressed, after they'd picked up the bagel and lobbed it into the hard shoulder
TheDecameron
Unicorns fart glitter.
I was expecting an angle grinder doing 70mph on the Queen’s highway with a bill for resurfacing popping through your letterbox.
Yank
Bulbous Also Tapered
Yes. I've got a warning light for that.
linnfomaniac83
I bet you can’t wheelie a unicycle!
Ouch, not good. When I bought my Mercedes CLK (used) it was sold with a brand new set of tyres (I’d asked for this or a discount because the rear tyres were close to the legal limit), great... or so I thought until one came off the rim and left me facing the wrong way on the exit of a roundabout on the way home from the dealership... they’d fitted the same size on the rear as the front, the rears were supposed significantly wider, what with it being a 5 litre V8 and all that. They’d stretched them onto the rims in the vein hope that the air would keep them on the rims... must’ve managed all of 5-6 miles. I don’t know how I didn’t notice when I collected it. Luckily no serious damage, just a badly scratched rim... Man did I have some words for them as I returned with it on an RAC truck an hour or so later... I got new rims and tyres out of them. Must’ve cost them a few quid, but I’d have made life difficult for them if they didn’t comply. Sadly that was just the start of a bad relationship with that car, it was a money pit with all sorts of electrical gremlins which cost a fortune to diagnose and fix, the worst of which made it stick in first gear exiting Charnock Richard services on the M6... I might’ve had some warning if I hadn’t been behind a truck on the exit ramp, but instead, I had to wait for a gap and boot it, and when I did, I went nowhere fast... scared the living shit out of me and I sold the car a short while later.
PhilofCas
pfm Member
I think it depends on the car Steve, our Golf has 225/40/18’s and is genuinely a supple compliant ride. (In fact when we got it last year it’s that good I queried in my head if it had the correct suspension fitted (it’s a GTD)).
That explains why the Jag tyres are so cheap, they are the same size and it is clearly a standard these days. I still think it's a nonsense putting such big heavy tyres on a standard hatch. The whole point of a PNEUMATIC tyre is that it has a cushion of air. The less air you have the less cushioning you have, and using air to make up a rotating mass is effectively weightless. But no, we replace air with aluminium alloy and rubber. Because it looks cool. The engineers must be tearing their hair out.
Tony Lockhart
Avoiding Stress, at Every Opportunity
As we all know, cars have become much heavier over the last thirty or forty years, and therefore they require bigger brake discs. That goes part of the way to explaining the silly size wheels now fitted. Yes, fashion plays a big part too, but imo, current saloons and hatches on 18' wheels and 40 profile tyres ride better than many cars did on 60 profile tyres in the 80s. There'll always be the odd car, maybe a runout model, that has cheap, crude suspension but huge wheels on just to grab the attention of the easily conned, but you can spot those cars a mile off with their tiny discs and big gap between tyre and wheel arch.
I'm not so sure. And that's before you look at the performance of 225/40 section tyres in any snow at all. I used to be able to get a Fiesta through all sorts of crap in the 80s, I've seen the sump scraping on the snow in the middle of the road. These days a dusting thinner than the top of a Victoria Sponge will stop everybody this side of a 4x4.
Martyn Miles
pfm Member
My sympathies. Why does it always seem to happen within days of buying a new car, and never again? Until the next car.
At least you had some rubber left
I see this happened to an Audi.
A good thing as it ( hopefully ) slowed it down.