Tyre shock!

[KS]

Good grief... Just discovered that the price of 195/55x15 Yokohama AO52 tyres has risen by £130 a set in less than two months, now £935 as opposed to £805 from the same supplier. Do an eBay search for Toyo R888Rs in the same size and you'll hear crickets, see tumbleweed and plenty of redirections to Nankangs. I guess Mr Trump's escapades in the Straits of Hormuz are having an effect.

[Bootsy]

That stale Wotsit faced twatspangle has a lot to answer for.

[Nine One One]

The price of all tyres have gone up Keith, I needed some for the front of a standard car, watched the internet prices on the usual sites and they went up by £30 to £40 each since February.

[camperco]

Someone in my office thought it was a good idea to get one of those little desktop label printers.

Someone else thought it was a good idea to print some labels to carry in the cars for every time we visit a petrol station




Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

[anglophone1]

Fab- please send me some Angus

[misteralz]

I got sent a pic of a similar sticker from a pal in Alaska.

[Dougal Cawley]

Good grief... Just discovered that the price of 195/55x15 Yokohama AO52 tyres has risen by £130 a set in less than two months, now £935 as opposed to £805 from the same supplier. Do an eBay search for Toyo R888Rs in the same size and you'll hear crickets, see tumbleweed and plenty of redirections to Nankangs. I guess Mr Trump's escapades in the Straits of Hormuz are having an effect.

I'm going to apologise now for this because i am going to be brutal!

You are paying £ 935 to spoil the handling and the ride of you 914. You could have had some proper top brand original equipment 911 tyres in the correct size for your car for £ 528 including Vodka And Tonic. proper genuine tyres perfectly suited to your car in standard set up and would make a considerably nicer car to drive as a road car. (if you've done all that slamming on the deck, stiffening, and adverse cambering and stuff that is different.

https://www.longstonetyres.co.uk/165-r1 ... -ca67.html

with a tyre side wall that is only 55% of 195mm (107mm) instead of 80% of 165mm (132mm) you have lost an inch! of side wall height. that is going to make the ride pretty dreadful (also not good for the car. the tyre is there to protct your car as well as your peachy little bottom)

Being a Yokarama R88R yep it will stick like glue in the corners; if the actual foot print is in contact with the road. That is only going to happen if you have done your stiffening advers cambering etc to enable it to keep all its foot print on the tarmac under cornering forces.

I have recently been doing a thing with the tyre trade news because they wanted to use my handling diagram, but couldn't bring themselves to use my dreadful drawing so here is a comparison for you. it will be interesting to see which one you think is the clearest.





It doens't demonstrate how different to foot print size is because the rounded shoulder of the classic tyre has a more gentle arc and the modern tyre lifts so much tread off the road and teaters on the sharpe corner of the tyre.

Anyway while I’m slandering your choice of tyre we are inevitabley going to move onto foot print width. You might think that a 195 section tyre will have just 30mm more foot print than a 165. However the lower profile, and the more modern a tyre is, generally speaking proportionately the tread width. So the tyre that Porshe wer fitting up untill 1968 - the 165HR15 CA67 (which i have given you a link to, not only looks fantastic but handles beautifully too) has a foot print width of 120mm. I haven't got a 195/55R15 on the shelf today, but i have got a 13" one and it has 180mm tread width. As a racing car modified and turned into a stiff track machine might think that is cool, but as a standard road tyre that will be so unpleasant pulling your steering all over the place unless you are on a very smooth road, while at the same time making the steering heavy, slow and numb.

in actual fact i think you would be suprised how close your lap times woud be fitted with the 185/70VR15 Cinturato CN36. Specially on really fast handling tracks like Goodwood and on long fast handling corners like Gerads at Mallory Park

Having had so much fun slandering your choice of tyres i am going to hopefully make you feel a little better by showing you how much money you have saved. How about these bad boys

https://www.longstonetyres.co.uk/18-60- ... -tb15.html

We do sell these to some Porsche for Rallys. they are pretty cool, but again, not ideal for popping to the shops.

Apologies.

Dougal

[jwhillracer]

Hmmmmm......

Quote - You are paying £ 935 to spoil the handling and the ride of you 914.

Keith's new tyres made such a difference to his 914 that he set a new PB on his second practice run of the new season at Wiscombe Park!

I don't think that he's quite so worried about the price now.

JW

[Nine One One]

duplicate post

[Nine One One]

You are paying £ 935 to spoil the handling and the ride of you 914. You could have had some proper top brand original equipment 911 tyres in the correct size for your car for £ 528 including Vodka And Tonic. proper genuine tyres perfectly suited to your car in standard set up and would make a considerably nicer car to drive as a road car. (if you've done all that slamming on the deck, stiffening, and adverse cambering and stuff that is different.

Dougal

And I suppose you miss the point that this car is used for HILLCLIMBING, if you read the posts on here as opposed to the hard sell of classic car tyres?

[KS]

Dear Dougal
Many thanks for your lengthy response.
Might I suggest you carry out a little background research before replying in future? As others have pointed out, my car is far from being a stock 914 used for trips to car shows or long distance drives across Merrie Olde England, etc. it is used almost exclusively for hillclimbing so the last thing I’m bothered about is whether it rides well or stays true to its original specification. Much like the Lotus Elite I’ve seen you race at Goodwood - I’m prepared to bet that isn’t running its original crossplies.
The purpose of my post was to express my dismay at how the price of my chosen (and in the hands of others, class-winning) tyres has risen sharply in a very short period of time, while other makes of tyre are apparently currently unavailable in the sizes I run.
However, should I ever wish to return my car to its stock, and I have to admit, rather underwhelming specification, then I know who to call.
Peace out…

PS - those Michelin TB15s may be lovely but they’re not class-legal, so even if you gave me a set, they’d only sit gathering dust.

[911hillclimber]

To costs, the tyres for my wife's Skoda Citigo are £120 each fitted locally at a tyre depot. That is a little cheap city car.

These are the same as what is on the car now, not some strange named budget tyre brand.

The Bridgestone tyres for my 2009 Boxster are just under £900 the set of 4, Porsche N rated, noisy as hell.

Just paid £500 for driveway fitted Conti spec tyres for my 911T on 7" rims and full hillclimb spec suspension, drives so well.

Used to very good effect Kumho V70 Soft spec tyres, 50 profile on my 911T when it's sole purpose was hillclimbing, E rated tyres and utterly fantastic, super 'square' walls, super stiff.

Now removed off the official road roadgoing tyre listing by Motorsport UK, too good! Wear rating is 80, normal road tyres are about 200, slicks on my Lola are 0.(and £2000 a set....)

[Dougal Cawley]

Dear Dougal
Many thanks for your lengthy response.
Might I suggest you carry out a little background research before replying in future? As others have pointed out, my car is far from being a stock 914 used for trips to car shows or long distance drives across Merrie Olde England, etc. it is used almost exclusively for hillclimbing so the last thing I’m bothered about is whether it rides well or stays true to its original specification.

Ha Ha! I thought as much, and therefore and hence forth i retract the majority of my statement as far as your car goes.

Much like the Lotus Elite I’ve seen you race at Goodwood - I’m prepared to bet that isn’t running its original crossplies.

Actually we do run our car with FIA papers which is all about keeping them stock. although the bushing in there makes for a dreadful road car, not that a standard Elite is a terribly nice road car for cruisiong around. when it comes into its own is when you thrash its knackers off. it loves to rev and it loves to enter a corner fast and carry that speed round it. for a little 1.2L car from the late 1950s it is remarkable.

And actually yes we do run cross ply Dunlop Racing tyres, even though in period later Lotus Elites did actually run a 155HR15 Pirelli Cinturato CA67. The Dunlop Racing (soon to be Goodyear) are the control crossply tyre with a 204 compound, which actually is a brilliant idea, and actually one of the reasons that Goddwood, and historic racing of this period is such engauging sport to watch is because we are on the Dunlop Racing crossply tyres. they don't let go, but they start to drift early, and maintain massive amouts of progressive performance. Imagine historic mootorsport with radial tyres and massive ultimate grip. it wouldnt be anywhere near the spectacle like this: (it doesnt start until 5:18 in )

https://youtu.be/UMr01B5e1e0?si=jVAuVgrKeYDGxGL7

The purpose of my post was to express my dismay at how the price of my chosen (and in the hands of others, class-winning) tyres has risen sharply in a very short period of time, while other makes of tyre are apparently currently unavailable in the sizes I run.

Prices of most things have risen heavily over the last 6 years, and i think with in that tyres have come out very badly. Enhanced first by the pandemic and the chaos that caused, the the increased energy cost cost by the war mongering idiot from Russia made a massive effect, and nothing seems to have calmed down since. they just keep going up.

However, should I ever wish to return my car to its stock, and I have to admit, rather underwhelming specification, then I know who to call.
Peace out…

Why thank you very much.

PS - those Michelin TB15s may be lovely but they’re not class-legal, so even if you gave me a set, they’d only sit gathering dust.

I thought it might help appease your shock at tyre prices. Here is a link to the tyres we sell for a Lamborghini LM002 which also might help make your tyre prices look not so bad.

https://www.longstonetyres.co.uk/classi ... lm002.html

i think if you have a Bugatti Veyron its even worse. I must confess i once sold a XJ V12 Jag because i couldn't afford the tyres, and i couldnt bring myself to fit budget tyres on it because it regularly went over the ton. infact if you floored it and put that auto box into 2nd at 90mph it was like a rocket ship. I probably couldn't afford the tyres because of the money i was giving to the petrol station.

[Bootsy]

I'm not sure the Tyre Press captured the essence of the original Douglas masterpiece!

[KS]