It has become sort of an unrecognized trend in Pakistan for buying new tires(and rims) when you buy a new car. But we also buy big wheels for our FWD cars exploiting the suspension. Buying Tires in Pakistan is never an easy task infact buying anything is a tough task in Pakistan, but since this is a Motoring blog, so we’ll just talk about Tires right now. Most of the tires available in Pakistan are imported tires, or if you’re on the run to buy second hand tires then you have to have the eagle’s eye to buy the right one. The technical or the experienced person may know the bluff and his way around them but most of us don’t have the eye or the experience.
There are two types of tires; new and second hand (used) that you can buy in Pakistan; both types’ prices have a lot of difference between them. But there are a lot of things other then just the tires that you may need to be careful about when looking for either of the types.
When you’re buying either new or used tires, there are few things that you should know before buying either of them, which is the new size you choose to go for. A lot of us buy and install alloy-rims the moment we buy our new car, put high profile alloys and wheels blowing out the suspension’s geometry out of place, then complaining of our suspension parts breaking down.
Normally, a RWD car’s job is distributed amongst rear and front wheels hence the front tires aren’t the one’s taking all the stress. In layman terms, the rear-wheels move the car and the front’s steer a RWD car whereas in a FWD car, steering, accelerating and braking are all performed at once by the front wheels hence the suspension faces a lot of stress, which is why we hear a lot of complaints in axles especially, then bushes, shocks, etc.
So whenever you buy a tire for your car, do not exploit your car’s limits and buy something for it wisely keeping in mind the stress that your car has to face if you install heavier and bigger wheels.
Apart from that a lot of readings are disturbed if you install bigger or even smaller tires for that instance. For example, if you have factory fitted tires of size, 185-60-14 and you install the new ones with size of 195-55-14 then your speedometer reading with non-stock tires will be too fast by 1.3%, so when your speedometer reads 60MPH, you’re actually traveling at 59.2MPH.
You can use this very handy tire size calculator for all your tire buying needs in the future and our guide on tire buying. Click here.
Alongside, if you install low-profile tires, the comfort level of your car also decreases considerably and your ride becomes harder. Most of the cars available in Pakistan are fwd and their application is daily driving, from point-a to point-b, thus installing anything flashy or big on these cars will just give you back problems as the rides will become stiffer due to low-profile rims and also the rim’s contact with the road will increase which may result in damaging of your alloy-rim. A lot of people in Pakistan installed big alloy-rims to enhance braking, but that further increases the problem. Take this for an example, a woman in jogger’s will run more easily then the one in high-heels. So, never be of the notion that installing bigger tires/rims will address your braking problems because braking has a lot more to do with; suspension, weight of the car with passengers, technique, brake system(ABS or not) and finally traction which is partially addressed through tires.
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Pakistani roads have very low amount of traction available in them, infact streets in most parts of the world have traction issues. Perhaps, you can use our guide to master the art of driving to learn a bit about improving your driving.
Next step would be correctly reading the tire’s sidewall to perform all your calculations to help decide what’s best for your car and pocket. In the developed countries, authorities have introduced newer ratings to be included on the tire side wall; the new automotive tires have ratings for traction, tread wear and temperature resistance which are collectively known as The Uniform Tire Quality Grade (UTQG) Ratings along with the ISO Metric Tire Code consists string of letters and numbers which are told which can be learned through this link.
You can read the Tyre Buying Guide on this link.
