A proper period sports car tyre in the size 145HR13

[SENC]

Mine arrived yesterday, to replace a set of Pirelli P1000s that look almost new but that are at least 12 years old, judging from PO pictures.

[661]

Indeed, hear hear to getting the right tyres.
And on that note, to encourage us to do the right thing, how about a Club discount...………..

You know you want to.

For UK customers ring up and haggle your club discount.

For the rest of the world, find your dealer on here http://www.cinturato.net/vintage-tyre-f ... guide.html and chat to them.

Very fair, prepare for the call...……

(Dunlop racing tyres)

[dougal cawley]

Indeed, hear hear to getting the right tyres.
And on that note, to encourage us to do the right thing, how about a Club discount...………..

You know you want to.

For UK customers ring up and haggle your club discount.

For the rest of the world, find your dealer on here http://www.cinturato.net/vintage-tyre-f ... guide.html and chat to them.

Very fair, prepare for the call...……

(Dunlop racing tyres)

Oo er um!

Sorry We can't stretch that discount to Dunlop Racing i'm afraid, though we do sell them https://www.longstonetyres.co.uk/vintag ... acing.html we do tend to ship them all over the world as well because our stocks are fresh and our international carriage is such good value. Mostly sent by a British shipper as well. Get in!

However i am very sad about Dunlop. When people wanted tyres for their vintage car. I loved the fact i could say; if you have a European vintage sports car Dunlop cross ply tyres are best, and they are made in England. However sadly they now farm out their production of racing tyres to Portugal, and they don't make any historic road tyres at all any more (there are some road legal racing tyres. but they are racing tyres first.) Which is sad. even the few sizes of Aquajet or SP Sport are out sourced and made under license.

SENC

please report back and tell us about the drive of your car on the Cinturato. We all know they look good, but it is the drive i am interested in.

I know they are great, i have them on my car. However no one believes me, because i am just after your money.

Oo pictures would be nice too.

[SENC]

SENC

please report back and tell us about the drive of your car on the Cinturato. We all know they look good, but it is the drive i am interested in.

I know they are great, i have them on my car. However no one believes me, because i am just after your money.

Oo pictures would be nice too.

Will do, though it may be a little while as my favorite tire shop is closed for the moment due to coronavirus.

[dougal cawley]

Yep, we have shut our tyre fitting fascility too

[Dieschelan]

Hello

Has someone put 155HR13 in a S3? I will put in my S3 minilites in 5x13 (original the car has 4,5x13). Is better 155 R13 or 145 R13?
I’m between the pirelis or the Michelin Xas Ff.

Regards

[Craven]

You will need to check the offset of your Minilites. 155 x 13 OK on original steel wheels but I believe if you use 155 on some 5 x 13 Minilites they touch the wheel arch.

[StressCraxx]

Hello

Has someone put 155HR13 in a S3? I will put in my S3 minilites in 5x13 (original the car has 4,5x13). Is better 155 R13 or 145 R13?
I’m between the pirelis or the Michelin Xas Ff.

Regards

I had 155SR13 Cinturatos on my Elan when I first bought it. All was good until the top of the tire contacted the underside of the RF fender lip entering a driveway. I probably was not careful enough and there were two of us in the car.

[dougal cawley]

If you look at the options on here https://www.longstonetyres.co.uk/classi ... /elan.html I hope it will help.

If you click on the individual tyres and then scroll down to the bottom of the page it will give you the dimensions and various other technical details.

I’m an advocate of thin and tall. And sticking original. It seems a shame to do a modification that needs another mod to make it work well which in turn can lead to the Necessity of another mod which in turn........ it’s not like the Elan needed modifications. (Race cars are a different matter. )

XAS versus Cinturato? Tough call. They are both brilliant. The XAS is a bit more modern (1965) if I was choosing a tyre for motorways and dual carriageway high speed cruising then I’d choose XAS. If I were to choose a tyre for throwing my car at a round a bout far too fast or irresponsibly blasting down wiggley roads flat out it would be Cinturato. Which is why I have Cinturato on my car.

However I have had a couple of cars on XAS and they are also great. The most fun was possibly my mk5 cortina with a Zetech engine and a welded diff. I put XAS on the front and cheap crap on the back, because if I fitted XAS on the rear as well there was too much grip, but with the cheap crap on the back it was hilarious. I could drift the back end as I liked, safe in the knowledge that the front end would never let go. It was epic on the track for 35 minutes. At 36 minutes the brakes would catch fire.

[benymazz]

Late to the party here but here’s what I have to say

I have the Cinturato CA67s on my car and they’re good as far as I’ve experienced them. My experience is very limited as I’ve only been driving my Elan for a year now and only have about 1,500 miles on the CA67s

I had a set of Kumho Solus’s on my 13x5 magnesium minilites which were pretty bad. I have a feeling it was due to age (they were 11 years old the first time I drove it) but they had no traction at all especially in the wet. Now I have the CA67s on the stock 13x4.5 steelies. Compared to the Solus’s, these are amazing. Glued to the ground when it’s dry and good performance on wet pavement. I can’t comment on how good they are when there’s active water on the road (that is, it’s raining) but I would imagine they aren’t great in that department and the risk of hydroplaning is higher.

Can’t comment on how fast they wear as I’ve only done 1,500 miles. Road noise is not a problem. Handling feels as tight and predictable as it should and as you said I throw my car down windy roads at irresponsible speeds. I have a wheel balance problem so my steering wheel shakes over 60mph but obviously this is the fault of the shop that mounted and balanced the tires for me, not the tire itself.

As an aside, the original Cinturato tires were what my dad used way back in the day. The way I know this? When I uncovered the steelies in the basement to sandblast and paint them, they had Cinturatos on them from 1970 (and the last time they were on the car was 1974). See attached picture. So we’ve come back to where we started, 50 years later

-Ben

Edit: did not mean to knock the Solus’s as hard as I may have made it sound. They might very well be good tires, in fact they probably are, and mine were just far too old and dry.

[dougal cawley]

Hi

I am glad you like them.

It is fair to say that if you were going to design a tread pattern to move water out of the way it would not look like the Cinturato CA67 tread pattern. However they do have 2 mayor advantages in the wet.

1/ they use modern Pirelli compounds. Modern rubber compounds give far better results in the wet than old compounds. The carcass gives you the progressive handling but the compounds move water out of the way far better than they did in the 50’s 60’s or 70’s.

2/ I would be very surprised if you aquaplain on these tyres, because they have nice and thin foot print with the rounded shoulder. I would think you were more likely to aquaplain on a modern 155. That will have quite a lot moor foot print.

I only did one race on my road car Elite but It wazzed it down at Snetterton. All the other cars were on Dunlop racing tyres and 120 bhp. They just blew me into the weeds. But what they didn’t know was that I was on Cinturato s. I kind of felt sorry for this chap who would leave me for dead on every straight then I would nail him on every corner. I guess this isn’t much of a reference really because cross ply versus radial, is a battle that was fought a long time ago. But it was a lot of fun.

[SENC]

Dougal - haven't put much of a test to them, yet, but they look the part...

[dougal cawley]

Oh they look epic.

I don’t think those cars look right on those big fat tyres. I bet the handling is beautiful on those nice skinny Cinturato s.

[Dieschelan]

Hi

I am glad you like them.

It is fair to say that if you were going to design a tread pattern to move water out of the way it would not look like the Cinturato CA67 tread pattern. However they do have 2 mayor advantages in the wet.

1/ they use modern Pirelli compounds. Modern rubber compounds give far better results in the wet than old compounds. The carcass gives you the progressive handling but the compounds move water out of the way far better than they did in the 50’s 60’s or 70’s.

2/ I would be very surprised if you aquaplain on these tyres, because they have nice and thin foot print with the rounded shoulder. I would think you were more likely to aquaplain on a modern 155. That will have quite a lot moor foot print.

I only did one race on my road car Elite but It wazzed it down at Snetterton. All the other cars were on Dunlop racing tyres and 120 bhp. They just blew me into the weeds. But what they didn’t know was that I was on Cinturato s. I kind of felt sorry for this chap who would leave me for dead on every straight then I would nail him on every corner. I guess this isn’t much of a reference really because cross ply versus radial, is a battle that was fought a long time ago. But it was a lot of fun.

Hi Dougal

I have seen in your web that Michelin is selling the 145HR13.
What do you recommend for an Elan S3 with minilite wheels (13x5)?
The Pirelli is to thin for this wheel. Which is better 145 or 155?

Cheers

[simonriley11]

I have fitted recently Michelin XAS FF 155/HR/13 tyres and tubes to my S3 DHC with no modifications to the suspension or bodywork. As Dougal (I bought them form Longstone Tyres) predicted they have transformed the car and it now handles just as well (if not better) than I remember they did in period on (good quality) period rubber. Yes they are expensive but worth it in my opinion for the smiles per mile.