Narrower tires for road racing
06-17-2015, 05:33 PM
#1
Narrower tires for road racing The current setup that I have is 245 up front on 8.5" wheels and 275 in the back on 9.5" wheels.
I'm getting a spare set of tires for the summer and some HPDEs and went with the same size but a different brand of tires (Nitto NT05).
However when looking at them they seemed slightly narrower and checked the website for specs and they both are about .3" narrower as far as overall width:
9.3 vs 9.6 and 10.6 vs 10.9
The current tires that I have now are pretty flush with the wheels, so these will be a bit stretched. Will it be safe on hard cornering for a slightly smaller tire with a stretched sidewall or should I go up a size to try and make up for the fact that these tires run a bit narrower? I haven't mounted them yet to see how they fit as I need to see if I'm keeping them or not.
I'm getting a spare set of tires for the summer and some HPDEs and went with the same size but a different brand of tires (Nitto NT05).
However when looking at them they seemed slightly narrower and checked the website for specs and they both are about .3" narrower as far as overall width:
9.3 vs 9.6 and 10.6 vs 10.9
The current tires that I have now are pretty flush with the wheels, so these will be a bit stretched. Will it be safe on hard cornering for a slightly smaller tire with a stretched sidewall or should I go up a size to try and make up for the fact that these tires run a bit narrower? I haven't mounted them yet to see how they fit as I need to see if I'm keeping them or not.
06-21-2015, 11:05 PM
#3
9.5 should be spot-on for 275s, so I wouldn't sweat that. I've seen 245s stretched to fit on 9.5 and thought that was an accident waiting to happen. 245s on 8.5s might be a slight stretch, but I don't think it's crazy. I road raced them on 8" wide wheels (Road America @ 135 MPH) and didn't think twice about it.