Mr. Francesco

Yeah, usually wide body cars like that are set up for drift and need a meatier tire. oh well, what ever floats his boat.

minhdinh85

in my opinion streched tire is used to fit wider lower offset wheels on to your car in oder to clear the fender, it's not a fad per say. it just gives you more options with wheels and it cost less to go through 205's then 245s if you are burning them up

second2none

Nope, you do have faster inner wear due to camber. Lip on the wheel is exposed so you have to be careful parallel parking. Other then that, its aok. For some, fitment and stance is everything.

Tee-Dub

It seems to me that it should have nothing to do with taste, but with how the tire was designed to work.

2tirefire

True in most cases. But you are going to spin a 255 or a 315 width tire regardless with 600+ WHP, and cost wise it makes more sense to go 255 as the cost goes up expotentially when you get 315's.

Too much grip won't allow you to hold or initiate in a corner or hit your clipping points, so this is the best of both worlds. Cost and ease of use.

second2none

Falken 452's designed for stretching!

Flite

God... this went off the original topic. The fact that it's a styling thing has been beat to death. I was hoping to find some facts about stretched wheels in here from some professionals.

Jim, I'm still hoping to hear from you about this. All I'm looking for are what are the risks with a setup like that?

SpeedxRacer

Stretched tires were used back in the days when tire technology wasnt so great and stretching the tires gave the tires a stiffer sidewall. Now we have the technology to keep up with our performance so stretching tires are pointless... and ugly

ace123

to keep it on topic and try to contribute some data, i don't know much about tires, but i work as a structural analyst in aerospace, so i can tell you how the load paths and rigidity would be affected:

just assuming uniform rigidity through the sidewalls,

when comparing stretch:

\__________/

vs 'design':

/__________\

sidewall stiffness during cornering will be the same if the 'stretch' angle is equal to the 'design' angle. greater angles (more stretch) will produce more sideward stiffness, as the moment of inertia perpendicular to the force would increase. the bend radius stress would be different in both cases, and i would guess that for an overly open radius (stretched) would be much better than an overly compressed radius if you wanted to get better sidewall stiffness out of the same tire, but i don't know. and i don't think this alone is enough reason to warrant it unless you're limited to a specific tire and want to maximize sidewall stiffness. otherwise, larger rims or different tires could solve the same problem as or more effectively.

obviously this:
|__________|
would have a much lower moment of inertia against sideward (cornering) loads, so it would deflect much more under the same load, and that's probably why it isn't recommended.

other engineers/etc, if i made a mistake, please say so.

i have a friend running stretched wheels, but he used them because he lowered the car and couldnt fit wider tires on his wheels without rubbing.

Brownergy

I really don't even know where to start on this. There are smart people, and then there are the others. I guess Dodge is wasting a lot of money putting 300 series tires on their Vipers, 215's should do the trick.

Anyone remember what S2KI was like 3 years ago. Better yet, pre F&F days. The good ole' days of true sports car enthusiasts. The days when out pacing Boxster S' and awesome top down group drives. Oh well.

Flite, I know the ill effects of running stretched tires. I've voiced some of the facts as well as my opinion in other threads. I don't really consider your set up stretched, but your car would perform and look better with a meater tire.

I hope Jim, a tire specialists chimes in the sacrifices you make when running these set ups. He'll probably also tell you that all the top competitors of the "Tireracks One Lap of America" battle aren't running extreme tire stretches. I mention that since our uber JDM crowd want's to point out that a record setting Time Attack Car had a 265 tire on a 10" wheel. I guess since the JDM crowd does it, F1 cars will be rocking 215 tires on their 13x15" wheels this season.