hello! looking for some help selecting tires from my 14 versa sedan. i drive 50/50 mix of around town and highway. locating in east central (read that hot and heavy rain showers) Florida. car handles poorly (unsteady - gets blown around easily) at 75-80 MPG on highway with factory LRR tires, although they are good in the heavy rains (no hydro planing). I have increased the air pressure to 42 PSI and that helps. I was hoping to re-size tires to something that would make car safer and more stable. Have used Michelin hydroedge on my altima with great results, but i think they are discontinued. what is the widest size or different profile tire i can put on my stock versa rims? i do not want to make suspension changes - prefer to leave the car all stock (except tires). Its a 5 spedd with 14k miles, so still have plenty of miles left on original tires. appreciate any thoughts / suggestions...thanks, nick

I don't pretend to be an expert on tires, but this particular question gets asked a lot, and I have always questioned the physics involved with the width assumption -- and I think the following quote pretty much agrees with my reasoning on this:


Why do people recommend wider tires? Don't wider tires mean more grip?

In a short version, no. Don't go e-mailing me about how wrong I am yet, either. Think about your tire as a balloon (more accurate than most people think) holding the weight of your car up. Now, if you place a balloon on the ground, it has a certain area that contacts the ground, this is the 'contact patch', now you can make the patch wider(wider balloon) but the total rear remains the same, because the pressure on the balloon is the same.

Now, what does this mean to YOU? It means that since the same amount of tread is in the contact patch area between either tire, 'grip' should be the same. Thusly, the only things affecting grip(since the area of potential contact is the same) are tread design and friction(tread compound).

Unfortunately it is not that simple. A wider tire does have some benefits over it narrower counterparts, with a wider contact patch comes a bit better lateral stability(to a point, lateral stress doesn’t vary THAT much between narrow and wide tires), but sacrifices some ride comfort, and less noise cancellation(in theory).

Something else to consider:

Think of a gap in the road surface, typically these run perpendicular to the tires contact patch. On a narrow tire, with a long contact patch, the gap in the road surface would take up more (percentage wise) of its contact patch than a wider tire. Make sense?

...so wider tires do provide some benefit, to a point. Wider tires usually come in stickier compounds, too. Yet, the compound and tread design has far more to do with tire grip than the size.

Now quit asking me how wide of a tire you can fit on something.

This comes right from the sticky at the top of this section:

tire-faq-t57952.html

Now -- I don't think your problem is the tires. It's the design of the car. It's tall and small, and not necessarily the most aerodynamic thing on the road. It catches the wind because of the tall side walls, and the low curb weight offers little resistance to its getting pushed around. I know this because I own two of them -- a 2014 hatch, and a 2015 sedan. It's one of the few things I don't like about them, but it is entry level, and you get what you pay for.

The problem gets worse as your speed increases. That is why I rarely drive over 70. The car is simply not made for speeds much greater than that. Sad but true.

Having said that, go ahead and peruse the sticky I supplied the link to, do some research on the links, and you can take it from there. Any number of other members will most likely chime in (and, of course, disagree with me).

Happy driving!