Tires - they do lot more than just get your car down the road; for better or worse, they can make or break your driving experience. When you stop and think about it, tires are pretty amazing; they’re the only part of your car that actually touches the road. You know, back in the day, tires used to be built like this one on this old Chrysler; if you look at the wheel and then the tire itself, the tire is absolutely enormous. There is a tremendous amount of side wall there. Well, that meant that these old cars’ suspension didn’t have to do much because the tires themselves absorbed the bumps. All that side wall, it flexed and absorbed the energy. Well, that was good as far as ride was concerned, but it was horrible for handling because when you went around a corner, if you went too fast, the tire tended to roll under the wheel and you lost traction. So tire engineers started decreasing the height of the side wall of tires. It’s called the aspect ratio, and here you can see one that is a little bit lower than the one on the Chrysler;
this one is a little lower yet, and over here we have what is known as a 40-series tire. That series means that the distance from the wheel to the top of the tread is 40% of the width of the tread. So, the lower the profile, the shorter the side wall, the stiffer the side wall, the better the car goes around corners. Well, that has a lot of advantages, but, it also has some disadvantages. You see, this tire is going to transmit a lot more road feel into the car, because there isn’t any side wall there to absorb anything. The other thing is, these tires are usually fitted on cars that have some form of sports suspension, so the suspension is tighter. Well, that means if there’s any kind of a problem with the balance of the tire or road force variation, it’s going to cause the tire to shake, you’re going to feel it in the car. Now, this particular tire – it has 24 pounds of road force, that’s a lot. But the tire manufacturer says it’s not a defect, because their criteria – 25 pounds of road force.
So, on this particular car, anything above 50 miles per hour, the steering wheel shook like crazy; there was no way to fix it. The only fix was to buy another tire. So, if your car has low profile tires, before you buy replacements, you have to ask the question, what kind of a guarantee is the manufacturer going to give me against harshness in drive or vibration in ride. You want to make sure that the tires that you buy are guaranteed to ride smoothly. And if you have a question or comment, drop me a line, right here at MotorWeek.Thank you for flagging the review. Nitto will review the content of this submission. Best tires on my car thus far Vehicle Information: 2009 Ford F150 Miles Driven: 0-5000 miles driven Are you satisfied with this product? Was this review helpful? Summer Ultra High Performance Tire The NT555 is an ultra high performance summer tire designed with the performance driver in mind. With increased traction and handling capabilities, the NT555 will get you off the line quickly, provide stability in the straights and confidence in the corners.
Enjoy performance and prolonged treadlife. The NT555 summer performance tire can be paired with the NT555R drag radial on the rear axle. When developing both product lines, Nitto matched the tread pattern and sizing to fit modern performance vehicles. The advanced tread compound balances dry traction and treadlife. The tread blocks were reinforced to provide great rigidity and stability. This creates a consistent contact patch under various driving conditions. The large contact patch adds more rubber contacting the road surface to provide improved dry performance while cornering, braking and accelerating. See if this tire fits your vehicle Approved Rim(Measuring Rim)Width (In.) Wheel DiameterTire SizeStock NumberInflated DimensionsApproved Rim(Measuring Rim)Width (In.)Replacement PressuresOverall Dia (in)Overall WidthFrontRear Technical specs are subject to change without notice. *Indicates Extra Load (XL) Tell Us What You Think Recommended for this vehicle
The low-profile Nitto NT 555 tire has an extremely wide contact patch, and with a specially-formulated compound it gives the driver superb grip. Designed from race tires, the Nitto 555 gives us our best bang for the buck in the performance area. Battle of the Streets Final Round: McLaren 650s vs. Porsche GT3 2016 Auto Enthusiast Day - Anaheim, CA. 2016 Auto Enthusiast Day - Arlington, TX Ride Along with Vaughn Gittin Jr in this 360 Virtual Reality Drifting Experience The Record - 2016 Formula Drift New Jersey Double Podium by Team Nitto! Team Nitto's day at the 2016 Formula Drift Round 2 at Road Atlanta NT555 G2: Nitto's new Summer UHP NT555 G2: The Legacy Continues Steve Turner Tests the All-New NT555 G2 Battle of the Streets Final Round Highlights 2014 Year in Review: Nitto Tire Nitto Tire Presents Auto Enthusiast Day 2013 Taking You Back (Wallpaper) - NT555 Nissan 350Z (Wallpaper) - NT555 Find Nitto tires near you Find a store
Our customers have told us repeatedly of automotive professionals insisting that since their vehicle was all wheel drive or four wheel drive that they had to replace all four tires at the same time. Though this is true on some vehicles, it is by no means universal. The short answer is to check your owner's manual, but in this article we'll give you some more guidelines and share what we know about the subject: It should go without saying, but all wheel drive and four wheel drives vehicles should have the same tire size on all four wheels. Having different sizes on some four wheel and all wheel drive vehicles can actually do damage to the vehicle. Since tires vary from brand to brand, and even from model to model, damage can even occur with tires of the same size if they have a large enough difference in circumference. However, since this second issue is one of the main focal points of this article, we will be explaining that in more detail under the four wheel drive and all wheel drive headings.
There is only one exception we've ever seen to this rule. The BMW X5 actually comes with option packages featuring different sizes front and rear. Even then, the two tire sizes are nearly identical in diameter. If, for whatever reason, you have two different tread designs on you AWD or 4WD, the tread should at least be similar in type. All season with all season, all terrain and all terrain, mud with mud. We haven't really seen issues with mismatching tread designs, so again the real issue will be with the circumference of the tires, which will be explained in more detail in the all wheel drive section. Four wheel drive vehicles can be roughly divided into two different types; those with manually locking hubs, and those with automatic hubs. With manually locking hubs, (the type where you have to go to each front wheel and engage the four wheel drive at the axle), you can get away with more. The reason for this is that the front wheels are not engaged at all until you turn the hubs to the "on" or "4WD" position.
You can even use different sizes, although you really wouldn't want to use the four wheel drive system while you had vehicle in that configuration. With automatically locking hubs, (ie, the type engage from a switch inside the vehicle) you need to be more careful about the tire matching. That is because with these systems, the front axles are always turning and they disengage at the transfer case, (or 4WD transmission). With any of these systems, how tight their tolerance is, is on a case by case basis. Some are touchier than others, but most of them being fairly forgiving. Two things are definite though: you should always use the same size tires on all four (excepting the aforementioned BMWs) and; you should check your owner's manual to be safe. Usually, if the vehicle requires close matching of the tires, the owner's manual will be very clear, and probably very loud about it with warnings. As an example, we had a Jeep Cherokee in the other day, and there were "warning!"s everywhere about all sorts of things, but nothing about having to replace all four tires at the same time, or even about tire matching.
All wheel drive vehicles are different from four wheel drives in that all four tires are engaged at all times. These range from the extremely tightly toleranced to the more forgiving. Again, the owner's manual is always a good place to start. Some good examples of these are as follows: Subarus: Subarus have, to our knowledge, the tightest tolerance of any AWD system. Since we see so many, we can tell you what the tolerance is. It can be stated in two ways: The first is 2/32nds tread depth across all four tires. The problem with this is that actual tire dimensions can vary from brand to brand and even from model to model. Therefore the 2/32nds rule is only good if you have the exact same size, brand, and model tire. The other way to check is to measure the tire around the circumference and then the tolerance is 1/4". That was circumference, not diameter, so you have to have a flexible tape ruler and measure around the tread of the tire. Also, having air in the tire affects the circumference.
Though the change due to having air in it is only about 1/8", it's pretty critical since the tolerance is only 1/4". Therefore, to get an accurate measurement, it's necessary to let the air out before you measure (since the prospective replacement probably won't be aired up). This second method allows you to check compatibility with any make or model of tire. When we were almost finished with this article, a Subaru came in that needed only one tire, so the picture shows us measuring the prospective replacement tire with our "Subaru Tool". You may ask what the big deal is? Well, on the Subarus, if all four tires aren't matched within 1/4" around the circumference, you will break the transmission, not maybe or sometimes - it definitely happens. Granted it won't happen overnight, and the AWD on many Subarus can be disabled, but the transmissions can definitely get ruined and then they have to be repaired or replaced. Then the cost will be a lot more than the cost of tires! Audi Quattros: Audis are another common AWD that we have the information on.
Their tolerance is 4/32nds tread depth. Again, unless you have the exact same brand, model and size of tire, this isn't useful. So measured around the circumference, this translates to about 1/2". Again, this has to be measured with the air out, since with air in the tire, there will be around 1/8" difference. We don't see quite as many Audis as we do Subarus so we're not sure how severe the damage to the vehicle would be. However, Audi definitely makes a big deal about this, so it's better not to risk it. Other AWDs: As stated at the beginning of this article, there is no pat answer for all cars, so the best thing to do would be to check the owner's manual. As an example, we had a Chrysler Pacifica AWD in and we checked it's owner's manual, it simply stated that all four tires had to be the same size. That is definitely more forgiving than Subaru or Audi, but again, different vehicles will be different. We've seen other vehicles whose owner's manual did say that all four tires had to replaced at the same time, so it's best to do your homework and avoid costly repairs.