Red Beast

ive been lookin at tires for the 20's im going to get soon, and i c that most websites recommend using 35 in the front and 30 in the rear, whats the advantage to having taller tires in the front? also i wanted to get 295 in the rear, so should i get 255 or 245's in my front? thanks guys

blike

Never heard of that recommendation before, but I assume it would be to level out the stance of the car

Legion5

Those website's tires are not carefully picked out or decided on using any thought to them. In other words they are "bull****". their choice are based on parameters that are designed to apply to "normal" cars, and mainly use the criteria such as being as easy as possible to pick out and install, not having anything to do with performance, the mustang is an incredibly unconventional vehicle designed with many kink's in it's setup and abbilities.

The rear wheel wells for example can accommodate any car tire currently made. You can even put 24" wheels on the car without modifying anything.

Those websites use mostly a simple formula of wheel well width combined with stock tire size and nothing more, then they pick from a list of easy to sell tires. That's not very good.

Also you don't understand what sidewall height is.

I don't really have time to teach you how to dissect the intricacies of tire measurements and choice but feel free to PM me for something to put on your car.

FYI the tire choice you mentioned is the one that's seen by far the most tire related crashes on the S197 mustang's various forums.

It has some pretty dangerous traits to it really.

Red Beast

really? why would that contribute to crashes of s197's is it traction and tread problems, maybe people using summer tires in winter and hydroplannin to much?

05 Mustang

I'm run the following on my car:

Front - 20x8.5 with Toyo Proxe 4 255/35/20's, overall diameter of 27.1"
Back - 20x10 with Toyo Proxe 4 295/30/20's, overall diameter of 26.94"

I did this because I wanted to keep the over all diameter of the front & rear wheels/tires as close to being the same as possible....so when you look at the car from the side, everything looks the same.

jdmcbride

+1 on what 05 Mustang said.

The 30 or 35 in a tire size is a ratio to the width of the tire, not a height. So when you go wider in the rear, you will need to drop down in percentage (30% down from 35%) to keep a similar overall diameter.

A good website to play around with tire sizes is:
http://www.rims-n-tires.com/rt_specs.jsp

grampa_stang

^^^nothing to add...except the 2 posts above me are dead on. 05 Mustang has the closest combo possible to stock hieght.

Legion5

Wow that's really ignorant, you know my dad wasn't Ford's number 1 race driver at one time just because random people could make assertions based on minor math over the internet. Oh no! it adds up! It must be correct. You know it's really unpleasant when I spend countless hours testing out at the race track on my own car and reading and learning about it, yet you still feel self righteous because of your little observation.

talking to amateur car enthusiasts about tires just gets more annoying by the second.

I'm sure you mean well so cheers to that .

Norm Peterson

You want to keep the tire revs per mile close to the same, front to rear, so that the ABS will operate at maximum effectiveness. Hence wider rear tires require shorter profiles than front tires. Profiles that differ by 5 front to rear are very common - the GT500 comes from Ford that way. What I'd be much more concerned about would be any recommendations of tire sizes where the profiles differed by 10 or more.

I don't know if specific tire size combinations alone correlate to accident rates. But I would expect a relatively higher percentage of those with 295/xx-20 and 255/xx+5-20 to also involve things like GT's with forced induction or drivers with less driving experience and/or poorer driving records. At minimum, the OP's car does not appear to fit the profile.


Norm

Norm Peterson

Please elaborate. Things like what car that most of your experience lies with and what kind of racing you do for starters.

If you're going to belittle the understanding of others of what is a truly complex topic, at least have the decency to bring some tech for us to learn from. So far I'm not seeing any . . .

Then remind yourself that the OP is asking about tires for street duty.


N