Al Reed restoration -- what size shoes to wear?, New Tires are mounted Options

[Jett]

With the help of this form and others, we have been slowly restoring our Delphi Green 73 914 2.0/4 Appearence package and are finally approaching the completion. In preparation of the build completion we asked Al Reed to restore our wheels and they arrived this morning. We think the wheels are amazing (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

That said, I was going to install a set of P7s 165 70 15.

Thoughts and advice would be appreciated.

Please note that we will share the entire build once complete, thanks again for all the help!

[johannes]

I like the 185/65. Very large choice in this size

[JamesM]

I like the 185/65. Very large choice in this size

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I have had everything from 165s to 205s on fuchs and i wouldn't go wider than a 185 again, with the 185/65 being the most available (and cheap) without going to short. If you want to spend the money the 165/80 vintage tires would be a good way to go.

Im not exactly sure what advantage people think they are getting by stuffing the largest possible tire on a 5.5" wide rim??? In my experience best performance comes from optimizing tread width to rim width, but that may all depend on your definition of "performance".

155/165a are as close to optimized as you can get but 185s are better from an availability/selection standpoint.

If you want to run a wider tire get a wider rim, 205s should be run on a 7" wide rim, running them on a 5.5" rim gives inferior handling characteristics.