16" Spacesavers - Bad Idea?
Posted: Mon Jun 30, 2014 3:02 pm
In my pursuit of asking all the questions everybody might ever think to ask, it occurred while idly discussing my tyres with the local tyre shop that a 16" radial tyre is available to buy for about £30 each.
The guys pointed at an old spacesaver and we had a bit of a laugh about it. But then I got to thinking - there must be a reason why we can't use these on our cars, but with a max speed rating of 50mph I don't think I'll be getting over that in the Bradford, and being brand new modern radial tyres should be as reliable as most of the aging crossplies on cars at the moment.
They are marginally lower profile, which will reduce ride height a little, but designed to be inflated to slightly higher pressure than "normal" tyres.
So far my reasons against it as a theory are:
Putting tubes into tyres not designed to have tubes inside them - from memory this is legal and ok, but I'm not exactly an authority on these things.
Less tread depth - as standard a spacesaver doesn't have as deep a tread as a normal tyre, but given the very limited mileage most of us are doing in our cars that doesn't seem to be a major issue, a spacesaver would of course quickly wear out on a two tonne modern car doing 10K+ miles a year, but on a Bradford?
Build quality/standards - I have no idea what standard spacesaver tyres are built to, but gut feel is that if you can drive a much heavier modern car on one for hundreds of miles, why not a Javelin or Bradford which is much lighter and not subject to anything like the same forces?
Wet weather performance - surely it has to be better than a crossply?
Jack.
The guys pointed at an old spacesaver and we had a bit of a laugh about it. But then I got to thinking - there must be a reason why we can't use these on our cars, but with a max speed rating of 50mph I don't think I'll be getting over that in the Bradford, and being brand new modern radial tyres should be as reliable as most of the aging crossplies on cars at the moment.
They are marginally lower profile, which will reduce ride height a little, but designed to be inflated to slightly higher pressure than "normal" tyres.
So far my reasons against it as a theory are:
Putting tubes into tyres not designed to have tubes inside them - from memory this is legal and ok, but I'm not exactly an authority on these things.
Less tread depth - as standard a spacesaver doesn't have as deep a tread as a normal tyre, but given the very limited mileage most of us are doing in our cars that doesn't seem to be a major issue, a spacesaver would of course quickly wear out on a two tonne modern car doing 10K+ miles a year, but on a Bradford?
Build quality/standards - I have no idea what standard spacesaver tyres are built to, but gut feel is that if you can drive a much heavier modern car on one for hundreds of miles, why not a Javelin or Bradford which is much lighter and not subject to anything like the same forces?
Wet weather performance - surely it has to be better than a crossply?
Jack.