215/50-15 tires for 89 SE

The rears are available the fronts are not in any common manufacturer.
There are lots of tires available in a 205-50-15, and that is what I would use. I don't think it will cause a problem. The car will run fine with different tire and wheel setups. Alignment may need to be adjusted.
There are also a few 225-45-15 available, but they are all soft rubber tires.

Randy

Thank you. I have read on another Lotus forum that going to the 225's in the front will cause poor handling, due to the extensive research and development Lotus did to get the handling "perfect" for the 89 SE. Not like I don't believe that but I've also read that each year esprit has different offsets and sizes so how sensitive could it really be?

I'm a huge car guy so I wouldn't exactly call this a noob question, but more like overly cautious.
The car right now has the dunlops that were recommended as a replacement, but have since been discontinued. The fronts are stamped from 2000 and the rears are from 1989... that being said due to the car having less than 20k on it and also being stored in a climate controlled gauge most of it's life.. the tires are not really that worn out or dry rotted. They do have minor flat spots though and I would feel much better if they were replaced.

Do you have any first hand experience with running the 205/50/15's on an Esprit?

The size of the tire obviously matters, however the handling of the car will be affected a lot in my experience based on the brand and type of tire within the same size. So since you can't buy tires from 1989, you are already dealing with different variables.
Certainly running tires that are 20 plus years old will not give you adequate handling.
The items that will matter to the original setup will the contact patch and the aspect ratio. Today's tires are very different than ones made 25 yrs ago. So if you stay close to the original size it may help, but you can't recreate the stock setup no matter what you do.

Thanks again for the information.

So would you go 205/50/15 or 225/50/15's for the front? Or something altogether different?

205/50/15s work fine. that's what was on my esprit when I bought it.

I have 225/50/15 and they also are fine.

I wouldn't say that the handling was "perfect" on the 89SE!

In fact here is a quote from Roger Becker http://www.lotusespritworld.com/ERoadtests/s4_autocar.html

Roger Becker, director of vehicle engineering and the man behind the S4. Becker wanted to - sharpen up - the Esprit and is the first to admit the chassis was too soft. “We engineered understeer into the old Esprit to keep its handling safe but, to be honest, we overstepped the mark.

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He was speaking of the SE, which had increased understeer compared to the 88 and 89.

I have an 89SE with the V8 wheels (235/40-17 and 285/35-18) there is occasionally a tiny bit of rubbing on the fronts. Now I have JRZ Double adjustable shocks with adjustable spring perches, and I am running a few mm lower than stock. Any lower and the larger tires would rub too much. But the handling is much better than with the old SE tires!

Thanks again for the advice guys!

Since both the 205's and the 225's will work.. any idea on which ones I should get? Just talking about size, obviously I will look at the type of rubber and brand as well.

Either will be fine depending on if you can get a matching set front and rear of the same tire...

Then it just depends on what you want to do with the car, do you want a long lasting tire that is good in the rain and doesn't handle very well on the track? Or do you want a max performance tire that sucks in the rain and gets 6000miles or less?

Well I do know the difference in tire brands/ tread design and the compounds they are made of, so that's not really the question.

I'm just wondering if any esprit owners have any preference in regards to a skinnier front tire (205) vs a fatter front tire (225). Since 215 is out of the question due to availability.

The car has less than 20k on the clock and I don't plan on driving the car more than 1k miles a year. But I do want a performance tire for when I actually do take the car out to various car shows. No tracking it or even aggressively driving it though.

10mm makes no real difference

Jdmfd3s said:

Well I do know the difference in tire brands/ tread design and the compounds they are made of, so that's not really the question.

I'm just wondering if any esprit owners have any preference in regards to a skinnier front tire (205) vs a fatter front tire (225). Since 215 is out of the question due to availability.

The car has less than 20k on the clock and I don't plan on driving the car more than 1k miles a year. But I do want a performance tire for when I actually do take the car out to various car shows. No tracking it or even aggressively driving it though.

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I agree not much difference. Mostly would want to see which have a set of 4 matching. There are a lot more 205 models available.

I'd try not to sacrifice rear grip relative to the fronts.

For Esprits with 15" wheels front and rear, the factory recommended a smaller cross-section in the rear when the original size became hard to get. I went with the factory recommendation, and I don't like it. Besides the narrow economy-car tire look, I can notice the difference in handling balance.

So, the next set of tires that I buy will have something bigger in the rear. And, as stated, new tires are better made than when the car was produced. So I might settle for an H rated set, even though the car came with V rated tires.

JMHO

The SE came with 16" rears, the prior Turbos with 15"

89.5 Esprit SE said:

The SE came with 16" rears, the prior Turbos with 15"

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Understood. My point was to be sure you use enough "tire" in the rear. Or, put another way, IMO you should not increase the overall size or grip of the fronts without compensating with the rear.

(EDIT Re Reading this, it sounds kinda strange, doesn't it? )



I would think that there is less danger of rubbing in back if a larger tire is fitted. I know that Lotus used wider tires (on bigger wheels) as the years progressed, but overall diameter didn't change, hardly.

I don't know if the tire choices are any better, but you might consider 225 in the front and 255 in the rear.

Vulcan Grey said:

10mm makes no real difference

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Well, the difference between the two available choices is actually 20mm, or almost an inch.
I went with 205/50R15 since i could get matching stock-size tires (245/50R16) for the rear.

At TireRack.com they have BFG TA in:

235/60-15 (OEM rear size @ 26.2 - speedo will read correctly)
205/60-15 (0.5" Larger diameter @ 24.7")

They're the closest in size, but are not exactly a super grippy tire.

In 2011, I got the BFG TA in factory OEM sizes (235/60-15 and 195/60-15). They were fine for daily driving (12K miles/year).

But after they wore down at 25K miles (legal, but slippery when wet), I upgraded to Dunlop Direzza DR101 (?) on 17" S4s wheels (10mm wider front/rear) - MUCH better handling, but more $$$ because of the wheels.

FYI 17" IMHO is a good compromise for wheel upgrade - a little heavier than 15" and a better selection of tires. A whole different and lengthy topic too ;-)

I personally found the steering quite a bit heavier with the 225 on the front and went wit h 205 this time around. Unfortunately, understeer is pretty bad. If I were to do it again, stick with 245 on rear and 225 on front and run a higher tire pressure on the front?

In terms of rubber,