Everything you need to know about tires

So you just bought a new set of wheels and you need to figure out what tires you’re going to wrap them in?! There’s fat tires, skinny tires, tall tires, short tires and all sorts of important numbers and letters on the side of the tires that you need to consider which is exactly what we’re talking about in this week’s Two Minute Tuesday.

Tires are one of the most essential parts of your car. It’s literally what connects your car to the road. So it’s important to have a good understanding of what kind of tires you need and what tire size is optimal for your car. We’ll start off with the most basic classifications where you essentially have all-seasons, summer tires, and winter tires. Pretty self explanatory here: majority of cars come with all seasons which gives you reasonable performance throughout the year. However, if you live in a location where you get lots of snow during the winter, you may want to opt for a set of winter tires that will provide you with maximum traction during those heavy snow falls and slippery conditions where the all seasons tend to be mediocre. Then we have the summer tires or performance tires that are ideal for moderate or warm weather. Most of these only work well when temps are above freezing. Get below that point and they get pretty dangerous to drive on.

Now let’s take a look at the info you’ll see on the sidewall of your tire and go through what those mean. We’ll start off with this “P” here. This is the tire type. The P tells us that this tire is intended for passenger vehicles.

The next number after that is going to be the tire width which is measured in millimeters from sidewall to sidewall. So in this case, our tire is XXX mm wide. After that, you’ll see a slash and then another number indicating the aspect ratio of the tire. For this tire that XX means that the height of the tire is equal to XX% of the tire’s width. The larger the number, the taller the sidewall will be and vice versa.

Moving along, you’ll likely see the letter “R” which stands for radial. This means the layers run across the tire radially.

The last number we see in this sequence tells us the wheel diameter. So if you have a 17 inch wheel, you’ll obviously need to have a 17 inch diameter tire to fit properly.

That section of the tires is going to have the most crucial information you need to know to figure out your tire fitment. You’ll also find other info regarding your load and speed rating, materials list and manufacturing info, possibly your treadwear and other specs as well as you go around the tires.

I’ll leave a link to a tire fitment chart for you guys to take a look at down below, that way you can get an idea of what size tires fit on different size wheels and that will be a good place to start. There’s a lot of factors that go into determining which tires are going to be best for you so make sure you take the time to consider everything before making your decision.

As always, if you guys have any questions feel free to comment down below. Hit that subscribe button and give this video a thumbs up if you are enjoying the content. Thank you guys for watching and I’ll see you in the next one!