article on tyre tread patterns

[Lang]

Lynne,

I will go with Hanno and agree that the numbers refer to the section width not the height of the sidewall. Verification of this can be found on numerous tyre manufacturers sites.

In the early days they used to describe the tyres as "Standard" or "Balloon" to describe tall skinny ones compared to fat round ones and they often only gave the overall height not width so you only knew they were fat or skinny by the word description.

Of course that problem has now been solved by modern tyre descriptions giving the width, height (expressed as a percentage of width) and wheel diameter eg 205 X 75 X R16 Which equates to 205mm wide by 75% of that high (about 150mm), R for radial and 16 inch wheel. Nothing like mixing up Imperial and Metric measurements to help everything.


Lang