Autocrossing on stock 14"

[ZXTool]

Has anyone ran with the stock 14" rims? My 16" Enkeis need some new rubber so i am riding on my stock wheels for now, but i have the itch to autocross.

But even on daily driving these tires roll so bad and perform horrible.

Anyone ever run them?

[STS-ZX2SR]

I ran 14's on my Focus in 2004...195/60 Falkens. They'll work--not optimal, but will be decent.

[zxtwou2]

kevin, remember what Marlon told you. small wheels aren't bad...he runs the smallest ones that will fit around his rotors and gets short tires as well...ones with stiff sidewalls.

if you are staying with the tires that are on the 14's now...i dunno what to tell you. if you plan on running the 14's just for autoX and having 16's for daily use, then get the shortest profile softies you can for the 14's and call them your dedicated autoX wheels!

my 17's are going to be strictly street use once i break down and get some 15" koseis or rotas...which will be wrapped in some short stickies. as long as you aren't bouncing your rev limiter for more than a second or two...you can stand going with a shorter diameter overall anyway...it'll gear you better. like in chicago, you saw i was bouncing the limiter once a run with my 17's....but the race i did saturday i never got close...so i definitely could have used some smaller diameter tires.

[STS-ZX2SR]

Tim, in theory, is right on.

In practice, if you are not going to just settle for something that "just works", what a person needs to do is build around the available tire, and then find a wheel for that tire. In other words, the ideal tire may not exist in a given size.

When we put our STS car together over the winter the original plan was to try the Toyo R1R in a 225/45-15...on 12 pound 949 Racing 15x 7.5's. Both the wheels and the tires went on back order by March, so we needed a Plan B. In my case, the next widest 'uber tire', that was 225 or less and 24" or less, turned out to be the Direzza Z1 in a 215/40-17. I found some Kosei 17x7.5s that weighed in at 16# and were of the correct offset...In hindsight the Z1 seems to be a much better tire than the R1R...so our Plan B turned out to be a blessing in disguise.

[ZXTool]

Well, these are just my 14" all seasons that I use for winter. I just didn't want to miss too many events before I save up the money to get some new tires. i plan on using my 16" for summer/auto cross..and the 14s for winter.