Directional Tyres

Barack Obama

Does anyone know about these? I had to get a replacement recently because I hit a sidewall off a kerb and it was a lot of hassle - apparently these tyres are made for one side of the car? The guy in the tyre centre told me that the car would pull in one direction if the right tyres are not fitted.

Anyway, I need to rotate my two right tyres because the wear on the front is twice that of the rear. Is this ok to do?

Thanks

Berty

Directional basically means they must face forward as such.

Think about it this way.

If there is a white line on the ground and you are facing a wall and are standing on the right.

Then your "direction" is forward.

If you stand to the left of the line(passenger side of car) and face the wall you are still facing the same way.

NOW, if you turn to have your back to the wall then the direction is reversed.

You cannot reverse the direction of a directional tyre.

So it CAN go on the left or the right of the car so long as the arrows on the tyre face in the correct direction.

So, you can take your back tyres and move them to front and vice versa.

Mr.David

sounds like you might be talking about assymetric tyres i.e. handed tyres? As above, directionals must point in correct direction but are not handed.

Barack Obama

Thanks for the info guys.

Mr.D - I think they are 'handed'. It's the first time I had to buy tyres for this car and they are 'super low profile'. One trye cost €250 and that was after shopping around :eek:

One downside of buying a car with big wheels!

Mr.David

Right, well im going to get shot for saying this probably but anyway.....

Directional: make sure they are pointing the correct direction (duh!)

Assymetric: makes ****e all difference, having a LHS tyre on the RHS (but still pointing the correct direction) will have a negligible impact.

galwaytt

Barack Obama wrote: »

Does anyone know about these? I had to get a replacement recently because I hit a sidewall off a kerb and it was a lot of hassle - apparently these tyres are made for one side of the car? The guy in the tyre centre told me that the car would pull in one direction if the right tyres are not fitted.

Anyway, I need to rotate my two right tyres because the wear on the front is twice that of the rear. Is this ok to do?

Thanks

A couple of things, as I have directionals, too.

1. You can change the tyres from the left hand side of the car to the right hand side of the car, but you have to take the tyres off the rims to do so. This is because, to put a LH wheel on the rhs, you have to turn the wheel 180degrees...........so your 'directional' tyre is now facing the 'wrong' direction. Hence changing the tyre around, on the rim. Not a DIY job, obviously.

2. You can 'rotate' wheels, on any given side, front to back, but you may find that the front and rear tyres/wheels are different width's. Now, this depends on the car, but on mine, they're 205's on the front, and 225's on the rear.

tossy

Barack Obama wrote: »

Thanks for the info guys.

Mr.D - I think they are 'handed'. It's the first time I had to buy tyres for this car and they are 'super low profile'. One trye cost €250 and that was after shopping around :eek:

One downside of buying a car with big wheels!

I don't think you shopped around enough,i run 225/40/18's and high street prices for my tyre of choice (f1 asymmetrics) are around 250-250e a tyre,i always get them from camskill.co.uk though for around 120e a tyre.

Like the lads have said neither directional or asymmetric tyres are designed to be only used on one side,to simplify it...

With directional tyres always heed the arrow

With Asymmetric tyres always look for the "this side facing out" text.

Midnight_EG

I'm just after thinking, and yes I do know about all sorts of tyres etc, but doesn't the whole directional thing get thrown out the window when you go into reverse :pac:

tossy

Do you often travel at 60mph in reverse on wet roads?

Midnight_EG

tossy wrote: »

Do you often travel at 60mph in reverse on wet roads?

Would you like to see?



Actually, now that I think about it, it's fucking hard to get a 1.3 civic up to 60 in forward let alone reverse :L