Tire width? Lets discuss.

Heres a mental debate ive been having. 

Wide tires look awesome. They fill the wheelwell and flares. They look fast. 

Theyre expensive, and the wheels to run them are too. This drives up initial build cost, and consumables cost.

But are they worth it? I can see every tenth being worth it to a competitive person amd a competitive car in an actual competition. 

Most of us (especially me. Im not much, but im all i think about!) Are budget limited, and not out to win anything. We are playing in hpde, autocross, etc. 

Do the wider tires help? Do they justify the 25-50% increase in price? Example:

Hankook rs4 255/40/17 is $174 and will work ok on many factory 17x8 or 9 wheels. To go wider with similar overall diameter is 275/35/19 at 336. 

Is the width worth the cost for the rest of the field? Lets be honest,  only 10% of us are going to be pointy end people. But, are we not pointy end people because of tire width?

I hope i phrased this well. Lets see where it goes....

Wheels and tires are nice in that they're pretty standardized and you can change them later, like once everything else is sorted and maybe you are being kept from the pointy end by not doubling your tire cost.

But also, big chonky tires do look awesome.

Short answer is:  only you can decide.

Also, re price difference, it depends on the vehicle, wheel size, and OD how much the jump is.  19" tires in general cost a lot more than 17" tires, so your example isn't purely a width thing.

The variables are pretty wide here (har-har). How does your car heat tires? How fast do they cool off? How heavy are the wheels vs the smaller wheels? What kind of competition?

Is this for a concrete build or just a general question?

This is a really open ended question.

Do wider tires help? Probably for most cars that autocross.

In the case of my Datsun (supremely underpowered) you'll get faster lap times with narrower tires. What you gain in grip gets offset by the extra weight and rolling resistance.  Road racing is my primary focus with the car as is running it on a budget, so I stick with the narrow tires. I would have to do back to back comparisons for autocross but I imagine it wouldn't be a huge difference either way.

In reply to accordionfolder :

At the moment, general question. But as i mentally build my next build, im trying to learn the areas i know very little about. 

Here's another angle- wheels are in challenge budget, four tires are exempt.  Let the widest decent wheels you can get in-budget decide for you?

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ said:

Here's another angle- wheels are in challenge budget, four tires are exempt.  Let the widest decent wheels you can get in-budget decide for you?

That's what I'm doing with my Corolla.

Im always looking at life after challenge as well. So im not letting the challenge be the only determining factor in this discussion. 

However, thats my challenge plan. Ive got an $80 set of 17x8 wheels 

Tires are a big factor in classing too. Do you have a class in mind?

Ian and I both thought the used Avons we ran on the Spirit (formula Atlantic Front takeoffs I think) were absolute magic for about $300 for all 4 shipped to our front door. But they are for 15 inch wheels and they have no DOT anything, so they only really fly in open competitions like the challenge. 

Also, GRM did a back to back a few years ago with same car same course but one set of 'skinny' tires and one set of 'wider' tires on an rx8. I think they found very little difference at all, or even that the skinnies were a bit faster. 

Compound is more important than width. 

Most of the look people attribute to width actually comes from tire pinch/stretch, wheel offset, and wheel style. Most of the performance comes from compound and construction.

If money is no object and/or winning is the primary purpose of the car, it's probably worth it.

If on a budget and/or fun is the primary purpose of the car, it's probably not worth it.

Dusterbd13-michael said:

In reply to accordionfolder :

At the moment, general question. But as i mentally build my next build, im trying to learn the areas i know very little about. 

Ah well, for the "general" rule, autoX it's kinda hard to go too wide - the fast dudes are always going as wide as they can. 

For Road course it really depends on power, and tire compound on how well you can balance heating a tire up and top speed vs min-corner speed. 

Personally, on my 141 whp, heavy aero Miata, the wider tires are massively faster at even a road course with tons of straight, but I can't say I've done a lot of scientific research on it...

I go wider every time because I think it looks awesome. And even before I wasn't driving nearly as much, I still thought it was worth it. 

My '15 BRZ looked AWESOME lowered over 18x9.5 with 255/35 Star Spec IIs. Even my lady the other mentioned how much she liked it when we saw a stock one the other day. Stock was 17x7 215/45.

The first deliveries of BRZ's are being taken now, so waiting to see if the fitment is going to be the same like basically everything else underneath the car. That way I can get a ridiculous set of wheels ordered before I order the car. A lot of custom wheels and take as long as 6 months to arrive.

Robbie (Forum Supporter) said:

Also, GRM did a back to back a few years ago with same car same course but one set of 'skinny' tires and one set of 'wider' tires on an rx8. I think they found very little difference at all, or even that the skinnies were a bit faster. 

Compound is more important than width. 

That was the consensus when I posed a question about running cheap but wide tires vs. grippy but narrow tires.  Better to run gumball 205s than crappy 245s.

Generally speaking of you're upsizing the wheels at least equally the wider tires will last longer. Maybe not a 1:1 with size increase but the consumable cost isn't as simple as just comparing the cost of a set of tires. Of course if you have to jump up two diameter sizes (or even one in most cases) to get wider tires, that's going to be a big cost increase. But going from like 225 to 255 in the same diameter for example, I'd guess most tires are pretty close to a wash on long term consumable cost. At least assuming autocross use and 200tw, where the tires generally run out of tread before they run out of heat cycles.

Pete. (l33t FS) said:

Robbie (Forum Supporter) said:

Also, GRM did a back to back a few years ago with same car same course but one set of 'skinny' tires and one set of 'wider' tires on an rx8. I think they found very little difference at all, or even that the skinnies were a bit faster. 

Compound is more important than width. 

That was the consensus when I posed a question about running cheap but wide tires vs. grippy but narrow tires.  Better to run gumball 205s than crappy 245s.

Yeah, I think in general compound is the most important factor, tire width the next, wheel width last (at least as long as all are inside "reasonable" ranges).

Removed from the race track, a nice set of 185/70 14's on 6 inch wheels are far, far more pleasant to drive than gumballs in a large by huge sizing, but that's not really the point here.

Pointy end of the grid, you need all the tenths.  Anywhere else, quality over quantity.

I don't know, if quasimodumbassfo, would sell me those cobra wheels I'd be 275 fronts and probably a 345 rear....

My mustang currently runs on 18 x 9.5 GT500 wheels, they are cheap,tough and a little heavy.  Stock is a 255 front 285 rear, once they die I'll go to a 265 or 275 square setup.  This will likely reduce my turn in feel a bit, but give me more tread up front and rotatable tires.  Dropping from old 340TW to new 200TW will be faster no matter what.

To answer your question, my ideal setup would be 19 x 10.5 Bronze wheels with a 275 or 285 square fitment because it would look even better.  It would not make me $2500 faster, the price of looking that much cooler could be a lot more seat time or suspension parts.

The lightest wheel you can afford can help you go faster, put the lightest tire that allows for the best balance of your cars weight and horsepower, this I feel is the ticket.

In reply to akylekoz :

I'm in the lightest wheel/tire catagory.  When we went from 18 inch 245s (I think) to 15 inch 225s we dropped 18 lbs per corner.  That's a lot of sprung and rotating weight.

I remember the GRM article as well - I believe it was by Andy Hollis.  My main take-a-way was there are diminishing returns on going wider when the car is relatively light (under 3000 lbs, maybe?).  With heavier cars, it's more of an "all the tire you can fit, the stickier the better" rule.  With lighter cars it can depend on the tire as some tires work better cold than others and a lighter car can have trouble getting heat into a wider tire. Especially if the time of performance is short - like at an autocross event.

This is a subject I am interested in as I may get a set of dedicated autocross wheels and tires for my '06 MCS JCW running in STX.  The Yoko A052 in 245/45-16 is the driver behind this idea, although finding a set of 16" wheels with 8" or 9" width and the correct offset may be tricky.  These would be purely auto-x wheels and would only be driven on the street when the venue is close.  For normal street driving, I would stay with the 205/50-16 tires I currently run.  In theory, I would do a test-n-tune event and run both sets and compare times.  And also have a temperature gun handy to measure the heat in the tires after each run. 

While I am definitely not at the pointy end of the field skill-wise, I have always tried to set up my racing situations where my equipment is as good as I can make it and thus the limiting factor is me. Of course, there is also the issue of running a MINI in STX, where it is very much an underdog car.

I don't know about autocross, but on the racetrack there does seem to be a point at which going wider stops paying off. For me, a lot of it has to do with feel.

When tires start getting too wide for the wheels you have a pretty dramatic degradation in steering feel (and "chassis feel" if that's a thing). Everything starts getting looser/sloppier and (for me) that makes it a lot harder to balance the car on the limit ... which means I can't drive as hard ... which means I'm slower.

My racecar is an odd-ball and tire selection is a problem. I've been running Hoosier radial slicks in 200/580r15 and 215/580r15. They're noticeably faster than Hoosier R7 and BFG R1 in 225/45/15. They also last longer and have better steering/chassis feel. So, tire construction and compound trump everything in my experience.

I'm so disappointed with the lack of snarky replies! So many thoughtful, reasoned responses.   Clearly this is a cry for enablement, even I'm aware of  Michael's wheel obsession.  

My minor contribution, the Mustang runs 245 / 45 19's front and back.   While not particularly wide I do notice they'll tend to follow ruts on worn roads that I don't seem to notice in our other cars with more conventional tires.   

In reply to Dusterbd13-michael :

In vintage racing we're all stuck with skinny tall tires.  I use 5.3 inches of treaded tires for decades. And learned how to make them work and last in a light high powered car.  In fact I'd get more than 4 years of racing with them. Once they went off  I'd still have almost 1/2 of the tread depth left. So if I wanted to race but the budget couldn't handle a new set of tires, I'd accept the additional sliding and loss of running at the pointy end.
    That was fun,  I'd come sliding into turn 5 sideways at 155 mph and drift around the corner. Oh, in the Hurry downs they'd gang up behind me and wait until the carousel to dive inside, one right after another. My exit speed onto thunder valley  was slow enough that almost the whole straight they'd be going by. 
   I had to slow down so much for Canada corner that a few more would get by.  Once past corner 14 my aerodynamics would allow me to repass some  and get a few more going into turn 5 again.  Only to have the Re passing occur again at the carousel.  
  It gave a lot of guys passing practice.  And looked spectacular.  But wow is it frustrating. 
  Now I'm building a Group 44 Tribute car.  If I run it in group 6 I'm required to run treaded tires. Group 12 I can run slicks 

    The trouble is the slicks I can buy for less than a 1/3 of what the treaded tires will cost.