[figgy]

Toyo Tires etc.

Can you be more specific about when you start to see the big difference, under 55 mph? Under 65 mph? (or kmh figures)

It would be nice to have less tracking of grooves, and your description of the handling improvement is very tempting.

Anyone else using these tires out there?

What PSI are you running them?

For a 10% hit in mpg, how would it compare to just running the stock tires at the Honda pressures?

Thank you!

 

[figgy]

P.S. toyo PSI

Me again!

Is the Toyo rating 44 max PSI?

Have you tried pumping them up to 50 like folks do for the stock tires?

If so, how does that change your handling and your mpg?

If not, are you game to try that and report?

I wonder if a high PSI on those tires would give back some of the mpg hit, and at the same time retain the handling benefits!

Honda engineered the car around LRR tires at 'stock' kinds of pressures, and since folks are running well over stock pressures, maybe other tires can perform well on both fronts.

 

[Guillermo]

See new post about tires where we will continue this discussion that has gone off topic...

 

[vegat]

Tire pressure

My wife and I have 3, 00, 01, 04 I have tried many combo. The best for my useage is 45 front and rear. Country roads get a little rough but not unbearable and highways are no problem average 75+.

 

[windmill]

Re: Tire pressure

My wife and I have 3, 00, 01, 04

You mean you have 3 Insight's on the driveway ? :shock:
If it is, verry good to hear :wink:
How more on the road, how better.

 

[Normand]

re

I have been running 44psi on all 4 tires with a very uncomfortable ride as our street in Quebec are very rough.
Yesterday i put 35psi up front and 32 on the rear, all i can say is WOW
what a difference, feels like i'm driving another car, very comfortable and i'm very satisfied with this.
My tires are 175-65-14 Toyo 800 Ultra.
I may lose a few MPG, but my back suffers much less. :lol:

 

[jrrs]

Re: Lower vs higher

Aren't you going to get more traction with the lower inflation, so that if you have the front lower than the back, if anything at all happens the rear might slip more than the front, which would in fact compensate a bit for the front slipping if at all during acceleration or oversteer types of situations?

i used to assume the same idea. that lower pressure = more contact patch eg: better traction...

i dunno, i guess technically you could have more contact patch, but how much really... , not mathematically really, but effect after all the factors of reality come down really... one has to be aware that reducing tyre pressure is probably going to have side-effects which will occur at a greater rate of increase than the rate of increase of contact patch as pressure decreases. also, consider that at 3 PSI, the tyre is going to have a very large contact patch but will probably be crap to use, assuming it even holds the car above the rim.. i know that is over-example, but at least 83% of what comes out of my mouth is opinion, 40% of the time. <G>

i can say that i used to run my tyres in my civic a bit lower than spec, for precisely that methodology -- but since browsing this forum, i, on a whim, decided to take them up over the tyre spec. got an aircompressor and a dialgauge for my b.day; and now i've got the fronts in the civic running at 50 and the rears at 46 ( cold, both ways ), and the handling kicks the pants off of what it was when i had them running under spec ( ~38 all around - tyre says max PSI is 44 -- not seeing any uneven treadwear so far, been pumped up since middle of march ).

absolutely annhilates it.

i'm going to change to running 46 up front and 50 in the rear, perhaps tomorrow, and i'll see how that feels; but fwiw, i'm probably never going to under-inflate my tyres again for the idea of more contact patch.

seemed to make the sidewalls as stiff as oatmeal when they were underinflated... real squodgy. that sucked 8x more than any improvement by having a centimeter or so more diameter of contact patch.

i would offer that for any situation you mention slipping, you're really feeling the car leaning against the tyre, and the car winning because of the sidewall rigidity, but i cannot say i have driven an insight more than once, so i'm just worth conjecture at the moment.

-edit-

oh, yeah, they're toyos on the civic too., i just noticed you mentioned that, figgy.

 

[figgy]

I run them all the same in the high 40s to 50 with both stock (GF's Insight) and Yokohamas.

I agree that in practical tests, the lower PSI does NOT seem to give better performance or traction.

The best example to me is that in my Honda Element with stock tires at about stock inflation the front tires would chirp on virtually every start (manual transmission) and I would get oversteer frequently. Then I bumped up the PSI. Suddenly, the chirping stopped almost completely...

Even if there might be more contact patch, it is a sloppy soft contact, and cancels out the increase in quantity by decrease in quality.

 

[Michael Huidobro]

I would like to thank Guillermo for info he gave a while back regarding tires. I bought the Toyo's T1 S he suggested and my 'oo Insight feels like a new car. The ride improvement and handling are well worth the decline in MPG. Thanks again. M.

165/65R14 OEM tires hold very little volume of air so they require 38 PSI at the front and 35 at the rear because of the 57/43 weight distribution of the Insight. Reducing the front tire pressures will overheat the front tires and reduce the load carrying capacity to below OEM specs.
A softer front tire will improve straight line traction for accelerating and braking. But the tire sideways will flex too much so handling performance will suffer. The lateral forces will flex the tire so much that part of the sidewall with scrape the road and much of the tread will be lifted off the ground.
Go to an auto slalom race and talk to the guys there.
Chalk your sideways and do some skid pad work, that's the best way to optimise the tire pressures.
If you want much better grip and handling and don't mind using a little more fuel get some high performance summer tires.
I use 195/55R14 Toyo T1-S summer tires on OEM rims and use 44/40 psi