Tyre sizes

[Inim666]

What tyre sizes is anyone using on 13 inch wheels as the 165/60/13 tyres seem to be really hard to get hold of and I'm going to be using some 13inch revolution wheels on my Midas as soon as it's finished as the 12s seem a little too small in my opinion

[Hans Efde]

There has been a lot of debate on tyres, so it's best to browse the forum. I've seen people using very wide but flat tyres (something like 185/45). I still have 175/50 tyres but I want to replace them because of age. I suppose they are now about 15 years old. And since they are quite small, motorway cruising isn't the best, even with a 3.15 diff. So I have been looking around and am thinking of buying the Falken ZIEX ZE914 175/60 R13 77H. According consumer reports it is a good tyre and I think it fits. In the past I used 175/65 R13 Toyo's, but these tyres were quite soft, felt unstable and wear out quickly. They also hit the bodywork under full load, but may be due to missing up stop rubbers on the suspension.

[benofbrum]

I have Toyo Nanoenergy 165/65 on my Excelsior. I chose them because they had a good rating for wear,wet grip and tyre noise. Also they are virtually the same rolling diameter as the tyres with which the car was SVA'd, so the speedo is still accurate.
I was quite happy with them during the track sessions at Castle Coombe last September. I ran out of nerve before they ran out of grip.

[ACourtney]

The 175/60 R13 size that Hans mentioned is the theoretically the closest in rolling radius to the 165/60 R13. Theoretically this is just 6mm bigger in radius, but the actual rolling radius and tread width tends to vary from make to make which makes the selection even harder.

To make things harder, the different Midas models have different sized wheel arches, getting larger with each model, so the Mk4 models have more space than the Mk3 Convertible, which is slightly more generous than the Mk3 Coupe, which in turn is larger than the Mk2. Given that information, I would tend to go down slightly on rolling radius for a Mk2 - 175/50 R13 (11mm down on radius) or 165/55 R13 (8mm down on radius). I'm told by my friendly MOT inspector that a 5mm gap must be seen between the tyre and the arch.


I have had more experience with the Mk3 and Mk4 models so can pass this on.:

I have fitted 185/55 R13 tyres (3mm bigger radius but 20mm wider) to both Mk4 models (Cortez and Excelsior) with no problems and also to a Gold convertible, which took a bit of tweaking to clear the back of the arches. However these are now rare as hens teeth. Toyo seem to bring in a couple of shipments each year and they sell out in weeks!

I have seen 165/65 R13s (8mm bigger radius) on several Mk4s and these are fine, but I have also seen two Mk3 convertibles with them fitted that had problems with them touching the top of the arches during cornering. In my view this is much more serious than touching the back of the arch when on full lock - you would only use full lock during slow manoeuvres and the effect is just to rub the tyre on the arch. Whereas, the tyres only touch the arch tops during cornering (at speed) and have the effect of grabbing the tyre, acting as a brake and effectively locking the steering (yikes! ). Of course this may only happen to the particular brands fitted, but I can't recommend the 165/65 R13 for Mk3s or Mk2s.

I have recently fitted a set of 175/60 R13s to a Mk3 Coupe. These touched the front lower lip of the inner arch and the back of the nearside arch. Why the back of the NS arch and not the OS arch too? It turned out that the wheelbase on the NS was around 5mm shorter than on the OS! Further measurements showed this was in the mounting of the front subframe and a 3mm shim washer between the rear subframe mounting and the subframe brought things level (the subframe mounting is inboard of the wheel, so any shimming at the subframe is multiplied at the wheel). Just to improve things further, I also shimmed the spacers behind the ARB a further 3mm, a la Metro turbo. This increases castor slightly, which increases the self centering effect and improving steering feedback, but making the steering slightly heavier. How much heavier is hard to tell as the wider 175 tyre also increases steering load, but in my view the driving experience is improved. Obviously this all moved the wheels forward and it was already touching at the front on full lock. However, the bottom lip at the front of the arch is easier still to deal with as I simply cut it out and moved it forward by half an inch (approx 12mm for those too young to know what an inch looks like), re-laminating it back in its new position.

[Geoff Butcher]

I've always had 165/65R13 on my Mk3 with no problems. They can just brush the mudflaps on full lock, but you don't have to have mudflaps...

[wolfie]

Yokohama A539 175/50/13 are my favourite for B road blasting but along with a 3.1 diff they're not great on the motorway

[Inim666]

I'm looking at 165/65/13 tyres as these are only marginally bigger than the recommended 165/60/13 tyres as the 175/50/13s are way too small in the arches on my mk2. My problem is as the car has never been used ever I suspect the rear suspension will settle a bit and drop on the tyres

[DavidL]

Apologies for reopening an old thread, but it came up when I searched for something else, and a question about wheel and tyre sizes popped into my head.
Rather than sticking with 13" wheels (on the Mark 3), would a change to 14" (or maybe even 15") wheels make the search for tyres any easier?
This also poses another question, whether 14" or 15" wheels are readily available in the correct PCD and offset, of course, and what donor(s) they could be sourced from.
Has anyone done any research in this area already?

[Stuart]

Tony put 14" wheels on, but modded the hubs to 100 mm PCD

Also a very brief search doesn't come up with many suitable tyres. Perhaps 15's like Jin has on his MK4 will give more tyre choices

Midas Gold mk3 coupe by midasracer, on Flickr

[ilmung]

_DSC2999-1280.jpg (252.08 KiB) Viewed 7969 times

I bought my MKII with 165/R12 71H,to my opinion ....they look very good .
What's the reason , besides the look , that many people want to get bigger wheels ?