I shoulda listened to Gabe.

[Gabe]

Off topic, but what wheels are those?

Mine?
American Muscle AMR, 18x10.

 

[Gabe]

Bulge you can't miss!

Reminded me of this fitment I saw a few days ago ... lol

 

[eighty6gt]

yeesh.

By some coincidence I have the same wheels and tire size as gabe's AMR he posted. Maybe I'd talked about it earlier. There's zero sense going with wider and wider rubber on the wrong wheel.

 

[Norm Peterson]

Jesus Christ. You are WAY overthinking this. "Bulge" doesn't mean shit. Go drive the thing and get the tires hot, pull over, and check temps across the width of the tread with an infrared thermometer.

OP's complaint isn't about appearance or even necessarily how uniform the contact patch usage might be. It's more about tire stiffnesses, which do vary for the same tire as wheel width is varied - wider meaning stiffer for at least three distinctly separate stiffness directions. While more 'bulge' is only a visual indication of softer tire behavior it's still a valid indication, just not a very precise one in terms of hard numbers. Obviously, some people notice this more than other people do.

Optimum wheel width (and the resulting amount of bulge) is somewhat usage-specific. A tire whose hard use is only straight line acceleration may well prefer a narrower wheel than the same tire size used for corner-carving, using the lower tire stiffnesses to advantage by taking some of the shock out of sudden power application on launch. Corner-carving and just general steering response and precision in general want more lateral tire stiffness, given that the driver doesn't like a sluggish or vague handling feel.


Norm