Interesting, I've never seen these markings. Then again, I always buy used tires, typically as cheap as I can find them. My favorite local shop will sell you a used tire with decent tread, and mount/balance it for a total cost of $30 (tire included). Of course, they don't have all sizes, and I sometimes have to source my tires elsewhere. I don't bat an eye at sidewall cracks unless I'm on for a 6+ hour road trip (always keep a full-size spare).
Well, the upside that I see is saving money. Most shops that mount/balance with their machine want to charge you $20+ per wheel these days. I buy used tires where ever I can find them.
For my Geo Metro collection, I have a huge pile of 12" tires in the garage, many as old as the 1990's. At one point, I was trying to get rid of the oldest most rotted/cracked (but still somewhat decent) ones, and I was mounting them myself (not balanced) and putting them on the back of the car only, with a full size spare with me. When I got sick of a flat or blowout every month or so, I eventually quit doing that.
In short, what I'm saying... you and I are in a rather different world, vehicle-wise ;)
Hehe, I've done this with lighter or brake fluid and a match a few times...
Yes.
Eh, I don't know, I guess I'm biased. I drive old beaters; most of my cars are pre-1990.
I'm posting from the rec.autos.tech NG which is cross-posted into this thread; I'm not subscribed to the other two NG's anymore (never sub'd to the android NG); I trimmed my list of NG's significantly.
I wouldn't relegate that behavior to just a specific NG, that's most of Usenet these days (and people in general). When the flame wars and what not start, I tune out; it bores me. I'm here for intelligent discussion.
There are two wide doors, as shown. It's about 64 ft wide, and 30 feet deep. I reckon it's easily big enough to be a 6 bay garage, plus extra room. The whole right side, I think with the junk shown in the photo, is a concrete floor. The left side is not; it's just dirt (but could be concreted).
Both sides are totally full of junk from the prior owners. My step father and I bought it at sheriff's sale for back taxes for a crazy cheap price, and we're cleaning it out. I have a booth at a local antique mall, and what I feel like cleaning has been sold down there. Lots of it is fit for a dumpster though.
I was not aware of the friction ratings. I'm usually just really easy on the brakes, and I buy what's cheap. Many of these cars, I tire of in
6 months, and sell it and buy another when I find a deal. One could say "flipping", but it's hardly that; it's more of a car buying problem -- I have too much fun with it. I enjoy *not* having a car payment, and I'd say I at least average out (sometimes I win, other times I lose when buying/selling cars).Unfortunately, in my cold climate, sometimes a simple brake job is a total PITA. The Olds' wagon had the rotors *so* rusted onto the hubs that I couldn't get them off anyhow. That goodness the neighbor brought his welding torch over, and got 'em nice an hot until the 8 pound hammer got them off. I can't fathom spending that kind of money on a brake job. A local exhaust shop chargers $265 per axle to do the brakes on most cars, but I still do it myself almost all times.
I don't have any books on the matter, but I have an old vacuum tube tester, and some equipment to restore old tube radios and televisions -- although that hobby has been side-lined for a long time.
Why does anyone even bother to respond to Alan Baker who is an utter moron.
You'd think every _adult_ would already know this... but not Alan Baker.
For Alan Baker to so brazenly be so confident in his ignorance is classic. I remember once he repeatedly insisted it's impossible to change the newsreader header line, even after I showed him it could easily be done.
Who is _that_ stupid but those who own DK lemon-juice bank robber brains.
Alan Baker is left of the DK quartile 1 where he thinks the little that he does know, is _everything_ there is to know about rechargeable batteries.
This is a four battery unit which I bought from Costco and put in the barn. It's a rare instance of where the slight voltage difference matters.
I have never put _higher_ voltage AA/AAA cells in anything but your point is valid that there likely exists AA/AAA cells that have higher voltages.
That's another instance of where the slight voltage difference matters. Also, sometimes the battery chemistry matters to some devices, mostly with respect to either instantaneous current output or long storage ability.
Despite what nospam has claimed in the past, both of those are deeply related to what I call the "internal resistance" of the battery (although I am aware nospam has his own definition of what that means, so I just state that here for the intelligent people and not for nospam since all nospam wants to do whenever I mention "internal resistance" is argue about it).
In general, the internal resistance you want to be high for long-storage devices, and you want it to be low for high current devices (e.g., the defibrillators I worked on in graduate school were all GE NiCad C-cells).
A great way to learn about things is to take them apart, where I used to take apart TVs in the vacuum tube days to learn how they were made.
iKooks ridicule people with an education simply because you don't have one.
Like most of the older guys here, I learned about vacuum tubes when my Dad would gather up a collection of them to take to the hardware store to test on the machine.
I used to take them apart and marvel at the complexity of the insides.
Fun fact: What _direction_ does the glass initially fly when you hit the front of an old TV in the middle of the glass face (to shatter it)?
There are five fundamental common consumer operating system newsgroups:
You can ask the exact same question of all five (assuming it's relevant, such as "does the Tor Browser work on your platform?) and you'll get an _adult_ response to three of the five.
Two of the five _always_ garner responses that were written by kindergarten children (e.g., from Lewis, Jolly Roger, Alan Baker, Joerg Lorenz, et. al).
As you've seen from the likes of Alan Baker & Lewis in this thread, they're incredibly ignorant - but - what makes them stand out is they think the little that they know is _all_ there is to know about every topic.
The nospam iKook is different from those, as he actually knows "something", but he will _always_ defend every Apple flaw to the death, no matter what.
Wow. That's great. That's a garage to die for! I love it! My brother has a professional lift which is one thing I _always_ wanted.
Do you do any woodworking? That's a hobby that also takes up floor space.
Ah. Good for you. Once you have concrete, you can do a basic alignment.
BTW, if you want advice in what tools to get for either the alignment or for the mounting and balancing of tires, just ask & I'll be helpful.
I'm no good with alignment yet, but I have the "drop center" stuff figured out on tire mounting, which is a lesson learned the hard way the first time that it matters (e.g., for my bimmber's BBS wheels, it matters a _lot_).
Junk is only something one person valued that another person with a different set of skills, desires & needs doesn't see the value in yet. :)
Good for you. Send me all the tools you don't want! :)
It's interesting how easy it is for any given person to clean out someone else's stuff. It's due to that value thing. They place a different value on the objects. Particularly on sentimental stuff.
OMG. If you buy your own brake pads & shoes, you need to know this, which I can help you learn. Bear in mind there are plenty of things that matter in brakes (like dust, noise, durability, etc.) but there's one thing that matters _most_, which is your cold/hot friction coefficient.
Luckily you can't get a bad brake pad (IMHO) in the USA, but you can instantly cut through all the bullshit advertising if you know how to buy them by their friction ratings.
I almost always call technical support and marketing for the brake pads I purchase (it started because I hated the dusting on the OEM Jurid/Textar so I contacted Akebono & PBR & Centric to find better replacements.
Talking mano a mano with the technical guys was an eye opener, especially as they _all_ told me (in effect) that they can put a single grain of dust and if that single grain is copper or clay they instantly get to claim it's semi-metallic or ceramic. Those are all marketing gimmicks (IMHO).
What matters most to a brake pad is the cold/hot friction rating, which is why it's the law that it's written on every USA passenger vehicle pad.
Oh my! Don't do that. Buy inexpensive. Not cheap. What I mean by that is you can _easily_ get _better_ pads for less money than worse pads if you _know_ what you're looking for.
Examples abound in the "what brake pad should I buy", just as those answers abound in every "what X should I buy", in that the marketing wolves prey on the moronic sheep who think "you get what you pay for", which is just stupid.
You get what you get. How much you pay for it depends on how well they've marketed it to fools.
Easily, a GREAT brake pad set should cost no more than about $25 per axle.
My rule of thumb on brake pads is the same as for tires, which is I never buy lower than the OEM specifications - and I often exceed OEM specs.
For tires, that's things like the speed range & load range and the traction/treadwear/temperature specs, where for pads it's the cold/hot friction rating.
Fun fact: What do you think the friction rating is of steel on steel versus that of _many_ brake pads sold today (e.g., those with an EE coefficient)?
Wow. That's a different use model than most I would think. I keep cars for decades (and yes, that's plural).
The great thing about bimmers is you get to learn about them right away, while with Toyota's it takes you years before you learn how to replace things.
Wow. I've _never_ sold a car in my life. I've always given them away.
But of course, that's when they're decades old, so they generally go to the people who take them away for free or to kids as their first car.
What I _love_ about owning old cars is that you don't fret when it gets a new scratch, where I've been to junkyards with cars piled five high and I think about how the first scratch made each owner cry when they were new.
Reminds me of when I replaced my tie rod ends, pitman arm, idler arm, and ball joints in the dead of winter back in upper New York state. I bought the parts by driving to the parts store, and the guy behind the counter ended up giving me two tie rod ends of the same side.
It was my first experience with the need to check the parts _before_ you leave the auto parts store (and of course, this was before the Internet).
I had to go back to the parts store, but this time riding a motorcycle in the snow, but what struck me was how nonchalant the guy was behind the counter.
He didn't care that his mistake cost me all that agony and danger.
The one nice thing about California where I live is the cast aluminum door handles don't break off in your hands when you open the car door in the morning!
I've had drum brakes that wouldn't come off, even with heat and plenty of banging. It happens back east a lot.
Yup. Nothing a welding torch can't solve when the oxygen hits the hot iron! I have 220V and gas welding equipment myself, but I rarely do it nowadays.
Great pads are about $12 or so each and rotors can be gotten for $15 to $25 each and a set of unloaded calipers can be obtained for around $30 each (after core refund). Ask me how I know this.
Always, always, always, I buy by the specs where I _never_ get lower than OEM specs for any brake or tire repair; but luckily, you can't get a "bad" pad or rotor or caliper in the USA if you follow good buying practices.
Fun fact: What's the one thing that did NOT happen to brake rotors when the average person vehemently claims that their "brakes warped"?
Well, if you don't mount and balance your own tires (note that Alan Baker got pedantic on you I see from your response), then you won't ever need to know about (a) match mounting marks on the _wheels_ and (b) the yellow & red dots on _tires_ (both of which are used for proper mounting steps).
Fun Test: Go to any parking lot of a tire shop (like outside of Costco, for example) and _look_ at how they did the match mounting of the dots to the valves!
Almost always the match mounting mark is easy to find only on a _new_ wheel, which is why that's the first thing I highlight with nail polish the first time I remove a wheel from a new car.
For new tires, the red and/or yellow paint marks are extremely visible. Bear in mind each manufacturer "can" use them to mean different things, so you "should" ask the manufacturer, where here's the Yokohama advice:
Here is the graphic that goes along with that Yokohama article:
BTW, in the rare cases where I _select_ the actual tires I am going to buy, I always ask to be allowed to choose them by date (yes, the date is stamped on every tire just as it's stamped on every battery) and by the marks.
Here's the explanation for how to mount Bridgestone tires by the dots.
It's a healthy debate whether you want the marks to be diametrically opposed versus clustered close together though - so if anyone out there (Xeno?) has advice on which is a better tire, that would be nice to know.
Fun Fact: They use white dots sometimes, often in across-the-pond "tyres".
HINT: Europeans often do all the colors differently - did you ever wire a German power cord to a US black/white/green electrical standard plug?
When I was a kid I did that, but once I got "flat spot" tires and another time a sidewall blew out, so I gave up on that when I was still in school.
Depending on the tire, a great quality _new_ tire doesn't cost more than double that price, without the mounting and balancing of course.
Obviously it depends on the tire, as the bimmer takes tires that are around a hundred bucks for OEM quality while the Toyota can take a $50 tire that beats the OEM specs. Most people pay more than double that, but notice what I say here which is most people believe all the marketing bullshit.
You _never_ get what you pay for. You get whatever it is that you get. What you _pay_ for it depends on how well it's marketed to fools.
The reason is that the demand by those fools jacks up the price of that tire, if it's the tire that you want. All this due to marketing.
Tires are a commodity. You buy them purely by the specifications. And luckily, just as with brake pads, the specs are on the tire. Same with batteries. The specs are what you buy things by.
Fun fact: What do _most_ people use to choose which tire or battery to buy?
A tire is a tire is a tire. Brand doesn't matter. The specs matter.
For better-than-OEM tires, you should pay about, oh, depends on the tire, but anywhere from about $40 to about $100 per tire (depends on the specs).
Check out the prices at Simple Tire on the Internet. If you give them your email address, they constantly send you sales which drop the prices even lower, and they almost never charge for shipping (which would be a lot).
These shops are extremely well connected to the tire mounting shops, so they'll send the tires to ANYONE you want them to, and you get their guaranteed price for mounting & balancing - and if they break the rules, they get kicked out of the program (ask me how I know this).
Given tires are a safety item, I wouldn't recommend buying them used as you just don't know if they ran them flat or if they sat flat for a long time.
What I do is buy the tire online by size first (as with shoes, if it doesn't fit, it's useless) and then by load range (you can go up but not down), and then by the speed rating (again, you can go up, but not down, although going down isn't any big deal on speed ratings) and then finally by the traction treadwear temperature rating (where temperature is speed by another metric and hence it's the least important if you drive like a little old lady, which is how I drive and I suspect you do too).
My recommendation? Stop buying used tires (only because of what you don't know about them) and buy tires that you know what you're getting where I just arbitrarily looked for tires for a Mitsubishi Lancer ES 2002 by clicking the buttons, which came up with a 185/65R14 90H XL rated tire at, oh wow, prices went up... at $64/tire for the Eco Dynamic
I would have expected a cheap car like that with tiny tires to be around $50 so maybe prices recently went up, but Simple Tire _always_ has sales.
Heh heh heh... if you only knew how far I wear my tread down (I start to "bat an eye" when I can see the cloth belts!) where I happen to know that the _dry_ traction increases as the tread wears down, so I'm with you on not worrying all that much about tires.
Bear in mind the common characteristic of the Apple newsgroup is that they shit in their pants on every possible fear that any marketing organization can fill them with - so they make _all_ their decisions based on fear.
The iKooks would shit in their pants if they saw these tires on their cars!
Me? I'm like you. I _start_ to worry when I see _steel_ belts sticking out, and, in fact, that's a warning to me to get new ties pronto. Since we have a rainy season, I also try to replace bald tires before the rains.
Otherwise, I don't worry about almost-bald tires in the summer months, although they are slightly more susceptible to punctures when there's no tread left. Ask me how I know.
Look at the *target market*. The manufacturer will put on the vehicle what they think the public wants, not necessarily what is best for
*all-round use.Manufacturers are *market driven*.
Low profile tyres make a lot of sense from a *highway* performance standpoint. Low profile tyres make no sense at all in any sort of rough road/off road scenario. So, for an *SUV*, standard profile tyres are a better *compromise*.
Pretty much.
Larger wheels with an overall larger diameter also negotiate potholed roads better than smaller diameter wheels. As a person who owned the original Minis with 10 inch wheels, I speak from experience. ;-)
I haven't had a pre-1990 car since 1995. Now I don't even want a pre
2020 car.
Me too!
Lighter fluid is hard to get out (unless you mean "charcoal lighter" fluid which I've never tried)... but I've tried acetone (but the problem is the lack of ability to "spray" it into the tire and what works best is MAF cleaner spray (the one with the red six inch long delivery hose).
The Whooooomp! that happens when it's lit is amazing, isn't it!
The problem, of course, is the danger of getting a finger caught in that where I use a kitchen lighter (the ones with the 10 inch long metal hose), but I prefer the way that I do it now.
What I do is take an air gun and remove the screw-on pointy tip which leaves just the threads which happen to be exactly the same as tire valve threads! That's the trick you wouldn't know unless you tried it.
You can screw that air gun onto the empty tire valve after you've removed the scharader valve and then you rubber band the gun trigger to always on.
Here is a picture of it where it works well to fill the tire to seat the bead but sometimes it needs work to get the bead into the "drop center".
Fun fact: You'll _never_ stretch a tire onto the wheel to seat the bead if you don't learn where the drop center is on the wheel. Ask me how I know.
At $20 per wheel, it would take about ten wheels to cover your basic cost for the HF tools if you can get them when they're (frequently) on sale.
For example, is my bubble balancer in action (note the red/yellow dots).
And here is the mounting tool in action (always bolt it down!).
And here is the bead breaking tool in action (it helps to bolt it down).
Holy crow. Twelve inches? Really? That's child's play. It would be _easy_ to mount those tires. You might be able to do it with hand tools alone.
Well, one (perhaps dubious?) advantage of mounting and balancing your own tires at home is you'll do tires that the shops will refuse to do.
That's both good and bad, of course, as they'll refuse to do a tire with black dust inside, which you can make a decision as to whether you want to use it. They'll refuse to repair a tire that's worn, where you can choose to do so. And they "can" refuse to re-mount any tire that they failed (ask me how I know this) so you're stuck with a wheel and tire separately after you visit them for their "free flat repair".
Of course, there's also the convenience of doing it at home, and, for some, the satisfaction of not being afraid to do it yourself (which I love).
Most people buy cars every five or so years (usually not more than ten, I would think). I used to be that way too, but no more. I like the confidence I get from knowing everything about a car that comes with familiarity.
Wow. I don't think I've ever owned smaller than about 14 inch wheels on any passenger auto, where I saw that Michael Trew had 12 inch wheels.
The 14 and 15 inch wheels are a breeze to mount and balance compared to the stiffer sidewall larger SUV/LT tires in my humblest of experiences.
There's a place for width (e.g., traction) and for low profiles (e.g., steering) and for larger air pockets (e.g., suspension padding), etc.
I've found, in practice, that the OEM tires aren't a bad choice for starters, where going _up_ in width can often improve traction a bit, but going up in diameter or down in profile may or may not increase things enough to not decrease other things too much.
As Xeno well knows, just as with changing the alignment specs, everything is a tradeoff where a _lot_ of times people go for low-profile wide tires purely for the look (e.g., it's ridiculous to put on a pickup truck).
To me, when I see tires on a vehicle that they don't belong on, I just see that as the owner being stupid - but maybe others are impressed by that.
It's like when I see an iPhone owner with those silly looking red iPhones.
You are correct in that my bimmer has wide tires and a lower profile ratio while my Toyota has tall tires and a higher profile ratio, where both would likely benefit from the substitution of wider tires & lower profile ratios.
However, my rule of thumb is the same as what the tire shops do though, which is I never put on a "worse" tire (by the specs) than the OEM tire.
In practice, that means it's never of a thinner width, and it's never a lower load range nor speed rating. The profile is up for grabs though, although I don't mess with the ratio as it changes other things too much.
Yes. But we're talking _safety_ specifications, such as the load range.
A reputable tire shop will even refuse to put a tire of just a lower speed rating than what the OEM tire was (ask me how I know this).
Hmmmm.... Are you sure? They make a difference in _steering_ of course. But how does a low-profile tire help in "highway performance" overall?
Well, back to _steering_, which is what I think of the purpose of low-profile tires, you don't _expect_ great steering response in a SUV or pickup truck, and, you have a different suspension in SUVs and light trucks (which, of course, is where low-profile tires have drawbacks).
To me, the purpose of low profile tires is quick steering, and for that, they work fantastically well. But who is expecting quick steering out of a pickup truck that is also expected to haul heavy loads over rough ground?
What else does a low-profile do fundamentally than provide quicker steering response?
Yup. But hey, I just looked at my own tire pictures, and look'it what I found!
Note: I used to mount yellow to valve stem and then red to valve stem.
Wow.
So much wrong in just a few sentences.
Given the the speed rating only matters if you actually drive at the speeds involved...
More things that you don't actually understand?
Do some research.
Maybe you'll figure it out.
Wrong.
And wrong.
And one out of three!
That's not even English.
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