17 vs 18 inch on summer tyres, any difference?

[innocent2k]

Hi

I'm thinking of going down from 18 to 17 inch tyres as a measure to try combating some road noise. I will also be swapping to Nokian Hakka Blue 3 tyres, that can only be bought up to 17 inch anyway.

Have anyone else tried going from 18 to 17 inch on summer tyres and found them to any less noisy at all or would I need to go all the way down to 16 (which I'm not sure will fit) for it to help?

My winter tyres are 17 inch, and I'm not having any issues with the road noise from those, and from earlier experience with the Nokian Hakka tyres I do expect them to perform similar to that in this area (on my previous car it was even quieter than the winter tyres).

Also, what about 215 vs 235? Do that make any difference at all on interior noise?

My current tyres are the Goodyear Eagle F1 Asymmetric 6, 235/40/18.

[GMcL]

Summer tyres have stiffer blocks, possibly (what the rest of Europe consider) an all year tyre like Michelin Cross-Climate with a less stiff block might help. Kind of half way between your winter tyre and summer tyre.

17" should be slightly better than 18" tyre as you will have a deeper sidewall allowing more cushioning/absorption.

I run 16" winter wheels and 18" summer. My car, S60, is an R-design which is controlled enough on 18" wheels, not firm, and bounces around on 215/55x16 winter tyres.

I could go 205/60x16 winters, I think that would be like driving a space hopper.
220px-Space_hopper,_Walker_Art_Gallery.jpg

[innocent2k]

Originally Posted by GMcL

Summer tyres have stiffer blocks, possibly (what the rest of Europe consider) an all year tyre like Michelin Cross-Climate with a less stiff block might help. Kind of half way between your winter tyre and summer tyre.

17" should be slightly better than 18" tyre as you will have a deeper sidewall allowing more cushioning/absorption.

I run 16" winter wheels and 18" summer. My car, S60, is an R-design which is controlled enough on 18" wheels, not firm, and bounces around on 215/55x16 winter tyres.

I could go 205/60x16 winters, I think that would be like driving a space hopper.

You're the second one having mentioned bouncyness on R-Design, so I think I will really have to take that into consideration. I do not feel like my winter tyres acts like that, so I my be using that as an absolute minimum dimension. I was thinking of maybe going for 215/55/17, but there may be a reason why it's not suggested in the manual I suppose, so 215/50/17 might be as low as I should go.

I also want to reduce the amount of tramlining that I experience with the 235s. I feel also there my winter tyres are superb (likely due to the narrower size)

I know summer tyres are stiffer in general, but I remember clearly that when I changed to the Nokian Hakka Blue 3 on my Avensis, they were more silent than the Continental winter tyres on the same car. So I would be surprised if I wouldn't be getting a somewhat similar result with the V60 on the same dimension

[innocent2k]

I'll update my post. Now received the new tyres and boy did it make a difference. Almost every piece of the high frequency road noise, just gone.

Which brings me to another question... while all the high frequency noise was effectively wiped out, there's still quite a bit of low frequency rumble left. I had this also with the 18", but the higher frequency noise overpowered it.

Is the "rumble" just an artifact of these cars or could something actually be wrong with the car? I did a wheel alignment not many months ago but was told it wasn't that much off to begin with.

The rumble is probably most audible in speeds between 30 and 80 km/h. Most of the roads in Norway are very rough, though, so there's a chance the rumble stems from that and that there's not much more to do. But it's less severe in my significant other's Ford Focus.

While I'd prefer it to be silenced further, I can accept this if I know it to be normal. Just don't want to ruin my investment after a few weeks, which is why I'm asking if there's something here I need to pay attention to