Wheels rubbing in the arches

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Robby

Active Member
Joined
Jun 4, 2004
Messages
172
Location
Edenbridge, Kent
Car
Smart Roadster
One of the front wheels on my 190E has been rubbing in the arches since I took the tyres back up to a standard size 60 profile - they used to be 55 profile. It rubs going over most bumps.

It is lowered, but only seems to be running on the drivers side front wheel.

Can you get pads to jack the springs up, or do they look and handle ok on standard full height springs? I think its been on the lowering springs for a few years and they are probably a bit tired now.

It has new shocks all round, so no trouble there.
 
Simple

Id change the tyres back to 55 profile!

you`ll find it had 55 on there because of the rubbing!!
 
I'm trying to avoid the 55 profile tyres becasue they make the speedo underread by rather a lot.

I'll probably just take it back to standard springs then complain about the wallowing.
 
I had a bad experience with an idiot tyre fitter putting on higher profile tyres than specified to a car with 265 wide rubber. That "5" between 55 & 60 does not sound like much, but it increased the overall wheel diameter by just over 1 inch under an already tight wheel arch.

How happy I was.
 
Robby said:
I'm trying to avoid the 55 profile tyres becasue they make the speedo underread by rather a lot.

I think you will find that 55's would make your car show a higher indicated speed than 60's.
The 55 would have to turn more times to cover a mile than the 60.

230K
 
I think you will find that 55 profile was the manufactures standard size. With those your speedo will read approx 5 - 7 mph fasterthan actual.
 
You are correct Ian. I made the silly mistake of believing haynes, who said it takes a 205/60 R15 on the 7 inch wide wheels. I asked my local merc dealer today who confirmed it should be a 205/55 R15.

Waiting for haynes to call me back now so i can tell them about the misprint, then I might see about pawning off these tyres on ebay and replacing them with some of the correct size.
 
I thought speedo reading was taken off the rear wheels via gear box, if so, why not put 55's on the front and 60's on the rear?
 
Well its meant to have 55s all round, so putting 60s on the back would **** up my speedo reading.

The tyres were cheap, and new ones will be cheap. I'll get a set of cheapies in the right size off of mytyres and flog these ones on ebay.
 

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