Useful sites to buy new tyres or changes your wheels

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Cheers Ken, I've got similar mondeo might give that a look !

 

I have the same size wheels on my BMW.

Bigger wheels dont affect the speedo but fatter underinflated or overinflated tyres can. They also affect your mpg, for example my BMW is rear wheel drive and one of my back tyres was loosing pressure and I was only getting 28mpg instead of 36.

 

Ken was not refering to average fuel consumption or mpg.

The speedo is connected to the gearbox, theres generally a helical cable connecting the odometer/speedo to the gearbox.

I'm not a mechanic, obviously its slightly more complicated because you can have differentials but they should only account for small changes in tire rotation in general ?

Since the distance traveled is the circumference of the tyre x by the number of revolutions of the wheel.
The speed is the circumference of the tyre x by the radial velocity of the wheel (estimated from the gearbox) the tyre size could affect the speedo.
As could a new gearbox if you fitted one.

http://holdenpaedia.oldholden.com/index.php/Maths

So what people suggest is not to change the tyre circumference, thats what ken has done, he has increased the size of his alloys but changed the profile of this tyres to a lower profile, thereby keeping the tyre circumference the same more or less.

 

ok

I have never heard of a speedo being wrong but I do know that petrol gauges can be very wrong

if car tyres are balanced properly and are properly fitted on all four wheels then 30mph should be 30mph

 

Just don't use them when it's not foggy! £50 fine plus a taste of the full beam from oncoming drivers!

As for your tyres - well they're too expensive and to be honest you haven't looked hard enough for a good deal. The real price of a tyre is half of what you pay the fitter. I own a 55 plate Mondeo ST220 that has 225/40/R18 XL 92Y and the jokers on those sites want about £125 per tyre - Continental Sport Contact 2. Add the fitting that's about £135. The rip off merchants where I live want approx £150 per wheel

I ended up buying 4 x Continental Sport Contact 3 M0 Extra Loads for £300 off ebay. There is a chap that supplies BMW M series and Merc AMG series tyres - which happen to fit on mine. He has a huge reputation and is cosher in his dealings! If you look quite carefully on ebay you'll find him.

When I took mine to get fitted it only cost £10 per wheel so all together that was £85 per wheel - better then £135 to £150!!!

Spend a couple of days on ebay and you'll soon see the "Buy Now" bargains where tyres are concerned.

 

Any measuring device or transducer is only so accurate, then they can go out of calibration. The police speed cameras have to be regularly tested for this reason, theres also a body called weights and measures etc that sets out standards for calibration.

Theres many reasons why your speedo could therefore be wrong, the law is that it should be within +0-10% of the real value in the UK I believe.

http://www.speed-trap.co.uk/Accused_Home/Rules_useage/The_Law.htm
http://www.halfbakery.com/idea/Logarithmic_20Speedometer

Get some neons on there Ken !

Well youd be able to tell if they are remolds but yeah I had a blow out once at 80 mph, I can't prove it but I'd say it was because the tyre was old stock and had been lying around for a while, so can't be too careful...

 

I used to have the 130 PS TDCi Ghia Mondeo if I remember it had: Front Fog Lights, Sony 6 CD Changer, rear parking sensor, Auto-dimming mirror, mirror puddle lights, auto-lighting. It was a nice car and was in Magnum Grey.

Economy tyres for the size of your alloys will be a false economy. Tyres are the most important part of a vehicle and I can never understand why people go for cheapo options! You'll be lucky to see 5,000 - 10,000 miles out of those! My last continentals lasted 18,000 miles with hard driving so lord know's how long those cheapos will last on that wider alloy profile! How much is your car worth just out of interest?

The websites you mention are not a "proper store" either! They are part of a cartel that is keeping prices inflated - pardon the pun. They do you NO favours - like I said if you look on ebay and find the few that deal DIRECT with the distributor and you'll find decent tyres at a decent price - as opposed to putting your life in the hands of far eastern tyres that only cost 10 quid to make! The chap I dealt with has a reputation in excess of 4000 and supplies tyres to owners of BMW M3s, M5s etc...he's a good person to know.

You're buying a decent car, decent alloys so why compliment them with shite tyres? You'd be better off just keeping your steels and putting decent Contis on them for the same price as the cheapo low profile Hung Kook jobs!

P.S. Most front foggers are not boy racers! My m8 who is a copper tells me that it's mostly elderly BMW drivers that he pulls over and fines!

 

Gee this really is getting out of hand !

Well i'm no tyre or engineering expert....

but

Alloy wheels should therefore increase the effectiveness of the suspension, handling, brakes, ride, etc.

Well rubbers rubber...or is it?

The rubber compounds do change, if you watch formula 1 you will see them argue that a tyre manufacturer can win a race for them... However driving on the road is possibly a different matter...

So theres possibly two or three variables ?

1. Rubber compound
2. Tread design
3. Tyre profile

Compound, softer compounds can provide more grip, but they don't last as long. Harder compounds less grip, but last longer. Again its a tradeoff, think about it, you want maximum friction for maximum grip, more friction = more wear. I'm no physics expert but again I doubt theres that much difference by manufacturer in terms of wear for a similar hardness of the compound.

Tread, as with anything its a tradeoff, slicks will give you more traction in the dry, useless in the wet, hard to determine any benefit from different tread designs for road tyres.

Profile, well this probably means more wear and less effective suspension from the tyre. Not dependant on manufacturer, largely an asthetics choice for most people. Non low profile work better on ice.

 

Nice one dmarsh - most informative there! Cheers

I can only go by what I've experienced and by what others will low profiles have told me. I once made the mistake of putting Toyos on my ST and bloody hell the thing was sliding and the traction control light was coming on quite a lot! The ride was also very noisy - but the big pain the arse was that they were due to be changed after 7,000 miles!!! What worried me the most was the handling - terrible and the steering was quite heavy too. So I went back to the Contis and the car drives like a dream! It's the last time I ignore the manufacturers spec!!!

 

Wagnerk,

A useful site for you: http://www.fordpartsuk.com these guys will source new parts for you...i.e the foglights

 

These guys should help with sourcing the Original Ford stereos that would go in the Ghia/Zetec

http://www.soundmasterscotland.com

 

Do you know about the auto locking feature when you get over 5mph? Should work on yours but it's a great safety feature as I had 2 scumbags tried to get into me ST at traffic lights and luckily the auto locking kicked in when I left home so the doors were locked!!! I can post the how to on here if you like? It's a feature that is built into the Mondeo management system but just requires a lock/unlock combination to activate it!

 

My ST does that and my old Ghia did that. But it's done from the key. When I press and hold down the close button all windows close and the opposite when you press and hold the open button. There is a combination to activate it on the window buttons. But the system has to have the Global Open/CLose function. I'll post the window combination but not sure if it'll work on yours.

 

Automatic One Touch Window Control (required for global opening/closing)

1. Press the power window control switch close button until the door window is fully closed and hold the button in the close position for a further second.

2. Release the power window control switch close button and press again two or three more times, for one second each time.

3. Press the power window control switch open button until the door window is fully open.

4. Briefly press the power window control switch close button to the second detent and release the button.

l If the door window does not close automatically, repeat the complete procedure.

5. Repeat the door window motor initialization for each door window motor.