I know some of you use different wheels and tires for winter driving, and I was thinking some might be using tires a lot narrower than the stock tires. Are the narrower tires significantly quieter than the stock tires?

 

Under 3k rpm and complaining about tire noise on a sports car. Kill yourself.

 

the tread of the tire is what mainly determines noise levels, as well as the type of road being driven on (asphalt generally being quieter than cement for example)

 

Before buying tires check these test results: https://my350z.com/forum/showthread....ighlight=tires

 

Sorry I may be out of place here,but after reading quite a few threads,I was wondering if you actually post any usefull responses?

 

Tire help is in the Tire forum. We put it there so that new members will have a hard time finding it. So far I think we are doing a stellar job.

 

Thats understandable,but a simple post such as the one by z1 is good enough.with over 37,000 posts you ought to write a book,because I am sure all your posts were filled with nothing but helpful info,then you can sell them to all of us who are not as super smart as you.

 

I would assume that Nissan had a reason for recommending specific tire widths and it would be wise to follow these recommendations for performance, handling, and safety reasons.

 

Nitto Invo, very quiet

 

I would think so. Logically, less surface area would mean less friction. Less friction makes less noise. Whether the difference is noticeable to the naked ear is beyond me.

 

All things being equal, the identical tire with lesser width will run with less noise and get better mileage, but the difference is negligible.

It’s mostly the friction (and this is dependent upon tread design and the tire’s compound) that robs mileage and makes noise. Summer performance tires have a tread design that attempts maximizing contact with the roadway (i.e., maximum friction) along with a very hard compound-structure to keep the tire soft at high speed when friction heats the tire, and thus have more road noise.

Instead of focusing on narrowing the tire, you should investigate a tire’s road-noise rating. Summer performance tires that are relatively quiet: terrasmak recommends the Nitto Invo, and I would mention the Continental Extreme Contact DW.

--Spike

 

There is no correlation between friction and road noise. Things like noise treatment on the tread lugs, how round the footprint shape is, how wide the grooves are, how big the volume of air inside the tire is etc influence noise. You can't say it will be less, you can only say it could be different because each of those affects different frequency ranges.

Also, I've found through dealing with our different OE customers at work that every person has a different preference for sound. Some people like myself don't care at all about low frequency boom noise you might get from cheaper summer tires (like azenis) whereas those can make other people carsick. Same goes for high pitch noises. This is not even mentioning how the same tire could be silent on one car and unbearable on another, since every car has different sensitive ranges that might amplify the tire noise at a frequency.

I could go on all day about tire noise but to answer your question no, youcan't assume that narrower is quieter.

 

BTW, in case you are trying to find out why people use as narrow as possible tires for snow, its because they offer more grip in the snow

 

i think the asphalt and condition of the pavement plays a part in road noise too.

 

... Except that you won't hear much noise if there is not friction.

--Spike