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How heavy/light was the steering. How quickly did it self center?
This was back in the late 90’s but i had no problems with handling i had the 3.1 v6 motor nice handling quick acceleration, was a nice vehicle. Pontiac had quite a few cars with low profile tires.
Yes, in general, wider, lower-profile tires require higher cold pressures than narrower, high-profile tires, in order to maintain evenly that super-wide contact patch.
Opposite actually. Given that the weight of the vehicle is constant, installing a wider tire would increase the contact patch area and actually require LESS air pressure to maintain it's shape. Going narrower (like when installing snow tires) would require a bump in pressure.
Last edited by BostonMike7; 02-27-2019 at 08:52 AM..
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Originally Posted by BostonMike7
Opposite actually. Given that the weight of the vehicle is constant, installing a wider tire would increase the contact patch area and actually require LESS air pressure to maintain it's shape. Going narrower (like when installing snow tires) would require a bump in pressure.
I checked tire pressures for random vehicles on tirepressure.com, and in 4/5 cases the trim levels with wider lower profile tires required 1 to 2psi higher cold pressure than their narrower-wheeled counterparts.
The shape, and not the total area, of the contact patch determines how much pressure is required/recommended to maintain that patch under a variety of driving conditions and weight loads. In a narrower wheel/tire, the contact area is concentrated closer to the center line of the tire, and thus more weight per square inch/cm of contact patch area. Why do you think narrower tires are consistently recommended for those driving the vehicle in rainy or snowy environments?
For a wider contact patch(where more of the patch is further away on both sides from the tire center line), more psi is required to maintain that full patch in contact with the road.
Basic physics.
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