Actually, you may lose some cornering traction. These cars have a poor camber system on them. When you corner, the contact patch gets smaller as the suspension compresses. The wider, flatter tire actually ends up with a smaller useable contact patch, in the corners. The narrower tire may deform more with more of each corners weight distributed per square area of tire contacting the ground. This is a problem with lighter cars... Later, Clayton
Date: Fri, 18 Feb 2000 16:06:33 -0800 From: "W. Lee Hendrick" <[email protected]> Subject: Re: Tire Width 195 vs. 205 At 6:46 PM -0500 2/18/00, Mark Reda wrote: >I don't want to worry about rubbing and the 205 looks a little higher >then the 195. I have 205/50-15's with a lowered suspension (Neuspeed Sport Springs) and the tires do not rub, unless I hit a BIG bump) >Whats the benefit of going with 205's over 195? This has come up before; some people prefer 195's; others prefer 205's. The 205 is slightly taller and wider (obviously). It will therefore definately have better straight line grip (braking and acceleration). Lateral grip will also be better, because of the wider contact patch, despite the taller sidewall. However, the 205 is a little heavier and has a greater overall diameter, so it will make the car accelerate (a little bit) slower, but you might get slightly better milage. >I like the lower look of the 195 better personally. Personally, I don't care how a tire looks. I chose my tire size and model (205/50ZR15 PZeros) based on the my needs/wants. However if looks are important to you , then go with the 195's; the other differences are slight. HTH, Lee W. Lee Hendrick [email protected] http://soliton.ucsd.edu/~hendrick/ _____________ List Sponsor: http://www.netsville.com To remove yourself from this list, send mail to [email protected] with 'unsubscribe a2_16v' in the body of your message See us on the web at http://www.a2-16v.com Visit the 16V Homepage at http://www.gti16v.org
