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My tyres are scaring me - anything that the standard brakes of a mk2 polo can outperform is a bit worrying. Nearly rear ended a mk5 golf today, following at a perfectly reasonable distance, they stopped for some reason without even trying, I slid all over the place and ended about a foot of their bumper. Therefore, I'm trying to work out what I can do about my tyres...

I've currently cheapo bog standard tyres on, standard size whatever that is, all I know is that they're very skinny. So I was wondering, would I be better to go for more expensive rubber of the same width, or cheapo but wider tyres? It'll always be a compromise because I live in a perpetual state of skintness, but I really do need to do something just from the angle of safety... Any suggestions greatly appreciated.

if you've got standard 1-litre mk2 rubber on, you're likely running 135/80s.... on a budget formula costing about £9.95 a corner RRP
which you wouldnt catch me doing over 25mph on, in the wet

you should be able to get up to 165/65s on the wheels you have, apparently. but a right hefty booting of the middle pedal will still outperform them even with a high class brand on (well, michelin energies or something else around that level - eg dunlop sp20, pirelli 3000s - is about all you can hope for). or at least i should hope so. there should come a point with any brake disc and pad where you've pressed it hard enough that it just locks solid and it's the rubber/tarmac interface that has to give, unless your connections between brake and bodywork have rusted...

Well yeah, fair enough, I'd be worried if I couldn't lock up if I tried, but in my book locking up is something to do as a last resort, at the moment I seem to be doing it every few weeks simply to stop fast enough to avoid someone's rear bumper Probably ought to keep further back, but I do try to keep to the two seconds gap as it is..
And yeah, in the wet it gets scary.

So, 165/65 r13 - £32 to £52 / tyre inc balancing and fitting. Would I see much improvement over my current tyres by going for budget again but in a larger size? Or will it make a huge difference opting for a more expensive tyre? My bank balance is near empty atm and I've got insurance, MoT and christmas looming, so this isn't going to be very easy anyway...

well, go out and see what you have on at the moment first of all, in terms of
* size...
* brand and type
* condition - tread, etc

if you're already riding 165/65 michelins with masses of tread left, then you wont see much improvement

if they're 135 section arrowspeeds, say, or wan-li's, etc etc, with about 2.5mm tread and a dodgy looking "shoulder" then you might be well to consider splashing the cash. you dont have to go all the way however - incremental upgrades may do the trick.

heck, going from the arrows to the michelins in exactly the same size made such a difference braking and cornering in the wet... in fact i've damn near stacked it a couple times after going back onto the budget ones, so naff they are. Ok for braking in a straight line on a dry road, or hard cornering in similar conditions if you bend it over far enough that you're then running on slicks - not at any other time.

you should be able to get decent 145 or 155s for around £30 a corner plus the services. too bad you're doing it now - there was a michelin promotion on that ended at the weekend.... £10 cashback a tyre when you send your receipt in with a certain form, making the energies £21 a corner plus the fitting/balancing gubbins. Assuming they send the cashback soon that is. I've kept records of everything, photocopied, just in case.

It would appear that I have two arrowspeeds on the back both in average condition (more than legal, but not amazing), and on the front I have a michelin and another arrowspeed - michelin's nearly perfect as I only recently swapped it from the spare onto the front, and the arrowspeed's in about the same condition as the ones on the back. All the tyres are 145 r13, but I don't know the profile as I couldn't find it marked on any of the tyres.

So, in conclusion it looks like I have a full set of cheapo, skinny as hell tyres just preparing to kill me on the wet, leafy, icey winter roads.
Wahay!

I think this might be the right time to invest in some (cheap..) alloys and have them shod with fresh rubber, that way it's all out of the way and I don't have to worry about tyres when I get alloys in the future. Just have to see how I can get finances around it all..

and even better, you've got a drastically mismatched set up front!

apparently if there's no profile marked then it's a standard one. some people will tell you it's /75, some will say /80... i dont know quite who to believe, no real guide to it anywhere, and indeed, i had a couple of 145 -no profile- R13s that seemed to be different sizes to each other when put next to each other

i'd reccomend branded 155/70s, but then that's just me

Yep Mind you, it's usually the rear that causes the problems. Strikes me as a little strange as the more powerful brakes are up front.. but I guess weight distribution shifts under heavy braking and gives the front more friction, as well as the weight of the engine being up front.

I've already found some cheap alloys that I want to get and are only about 30 minutes from me, nice classic mk1 golf ones - http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll? ... 44460&rd=1

Just have to see if I can afford the rubber to go with them now

i think that's the controvertial R4BBY / NEWPICS off of porka? And what's more the cheeky cock is using a slice out of one of my pics - can't even be bothered to properly photo his own car!

edit: oh, no, not quite .... very very similar though, just the angles/background (and amount of dirt ) are very subtley different. ahem.

If you're looking for tyres, what size are the wheels?

i think the car being more lock happy at the rear can be down to
* binding shoes / sticky cylinders
* knackered load compensator (or, knackered discs!)
* you having crapper tyres at the back than the front

Binding shoes / sticky cylinders is a distinct possibility. Certainly one of my brakes rubs as I drive.. drives me mad, but I can never work out which one it is. I don't have a load compensator so it's unlikely to be that, and the tyres aren't really much worse at the back than on the front. My front brakes should be fine, the discs are 4 months old, the pads have plenty of life in them. Dunno about the calippers though.

* lack of load compensator
* air bubble in forward brake lines..?

i've got a binding shoe as well, but like i can be arsed to sort that right now!

just whack some decent tyres on all round and see if that cures it, if you can afford £120+ for that (not inc the valves, balance etc..)

I've got a couple of bottles of brake fluid in the shed, been meaning to flush the system for a while. Guess it might make a difference. I ought to sort out the binding brake shoe but I haven't got a clue how to go about doing it, and drum brakes are my worst mechanical nightmare anyway..

I think the easiest way to do this will just be to go for one of those sets of wheels and tyres on ebay, just see if it makes a considerable difference without shelling out vast sums on new rubber all round. Just got to see what comes up..

Jack it up at each corner, chock the 3 remaining wheels sturdily and then let brake off / take out of gear to spin each one and see how freely it turns. A little rub is usually ok but a definate slowdown (like my own rear left) is bad and needs adjusting. I think it's somewhere in haynes but it'll be a hassle to pin down.

I have an inkling the cylinder might be changable without taking the shoes off, if you put a gentle pressure on the pedal with a brick or something, then "jack" them apart at the top with some sturdy bracing item..... then remove brick, swap cylinder over, remove chock GENTLY..... then go about the usual full-on bleed.
should avoid having to deal with that mechanical nightmare. (the idea of them is fine, it's just all those bloody springs, its like a personal clockwork hell)

let us know how you get on with easing the nipples on the front calipers...

The problem with drums is that I don't really know how they work, so I don't know quite which bits to remove / replace or how to go about doing so. Haynes is useless too, can't make sense of it.

All of my nipples are nice and loose already I bled the brakes a bit a while ago to see if there were any bubbles near the end, but didn't have enough brake fluid to do the whole lot.

I'll take a look and see if I can work out which is binding. I have a feeling it's my n/s rear drum, but it's hard to tell.

they are a pain in the arse but just approach it with a clear calm head, and spend a long time just looking at stuff without touching, seeing if you can figure out how it works. There's the self-adjuster key for example, which you can eventually figure out what it is even though the haynes pics are bobbins. i could hunt in my archive and see if i can find anything useful?

i do get the feeling that if it's just badly ajusted, or a sticky cylinder, you should be able to fix / replace the problem without doing anything to the shoes or springs. quite possibly the auto-adjust can be tweaked through the bolt holes without taking the drum off, i've heard/read somewhere? (haynes?)

PS Oh sweet jesus I have got to get this wobbling problem fixed and back onto the michelins at the front, or possibly just bite the bullet and toss the arrowspeeds on the landfill even with a good 4 or 5mm of tread left. I nearly had an accident at like 4mph in Asda car park when the wheels locked and sent me on an ultimate understeer trip - slick surface, very poor traction anyway (that super-shiny deathwish concrete that you find in car parks married to fallen, slushed leaves), and that p*** poor rubber didnt help. It was literally like driving on ice, i managed wheelslip in 3rd gear. Tugging the handbrake on gave surprisingly good result however, and i don't mean tailslide but slowing me down.

After that I got into testing mood - went off to a reasonably tight, slippery (and crucially, totally empty) roundabout and did a few on/offs of the throttle in 2nd, which used to be a good guarantee of getting some moderate back end action.... not a sausage, and i even graduated to tugging the idiot-handle. It just ploughed straight ahead instead, almost into the bushes. That's how much more grip I have at the rear than the front right now. Frightening. Tiptoed all the way to work after that quite a lot under the limit at some points as the corners suddenly felt so much less easy.

might rotate them before taking it to the garage actually, but I fear the back end would become just as tricky. maybe go to decent branded stuff all round (leave the 155s on the back and get 165 up front? )

I attacked what I believe to be the culprit drum today. Gave everything a gentle prod. Seemed a bit stiff, so I gave it a bit of WD40 (carefully avoiding the linings of course..). Not much happened. Experimentally tried to remove brake shoe. Couldn't do it. Gave it a push with the wheel brace. Ping! Clunk! Ouch!. Entire mechanics of drum fell apart.
I discovered quite what a pain in the backside drums are to reassemble.. got there eventually after emptying half a can of WD40 onto all the springs and pivots. No squeaks reported as yet.. keeping my fingers crossed, I may have inadvertantly fixed something

I know exactly what you mean about the arrowspeeds.. on roundabouts I get horrendous understeer, damn nearly come off when approaching an exit a bit too vigorously on a couple of occasions. Sure, it's fun to be able to scream the tyres round the slightest of corners without even trying, but not exactly great from a handling / safety angle As for using the handbrake to get round them, my handbrake is so utterly pathetic that I don't think it'd make the slightest bit of difference. I tested it earlier today, and I can put the handbrake hard on at 50mph and hardly feel a difference. Really pretty poor..
Managed a decent wheelspin in 2nd on a clean, if slightly damn, road last night, which is worrying when I only have 45bhp going through that pathetic excuse for a set of tyres..

Got to get this sorted soon, but I have no money whatsoever