I read about 1050x15 1300x16 tire sizes. What is the diameter? I'm guessing that the first is tread width and the second is rim size but other than that I have no idea!
the diameter can be very different between manufacturers, which one are you looking at? are you concerned about clearance or height?
I'm just curious about the different overall diameters. I know what a 14x32 slick is but these numbers are cryptic!
a 10.50x15 is 10.5" of tread (unless it's a 10.5w, usually spec tires for class racing), and there are lots of different heights and diameters. mostly, it's off road tires that are described like this, like a 31x10.5x15 the 14x32 is really a 14x32x15, a pretty commonly used size in racing slicks.
it's an older way of stating tire size. For instance a 1000-16 would be a tire that is 30.5" tall, 8" wide for a 16" wheel. When you get into something like a G78-15 that even makes less sense. The sizes that you listed are either obsolete, or were never available. It seems most tire mfg's have their own standard of measurements and like another poster said, varies slightly. I believe this is because of the different countries they are produced in. If you need help in finding the right size tire, just post up the height and width that you require and somebody should be able to chime in on a close size that will work for you.
I'm looking for something in the size of 30" tall and 10-12" wide for a 15" rim. A cheater slick at that but not piecrust, I like 'em just not for my car.
I always thought that those sorts of sizes are properly 10.50x15 or 13.00x16, respectively, and that the point had got elided as the actual widths and/or sidewall heights started deviating from corresponding dimensions in inches. In my part of the world there had been a fairly aggressive drive to metrication in the '70s, and I always thought leaving out the decimal had to do with an official agenda to cause people to stop having a feel for how big an inch is, by reducing that tyre designation to pretty much an arbitrary code. (It went as far as it being, for a time, illegal for local magazines to publish engine power in bhp. Consequently locals now talk about kiloWatts and don't know what the imported mags are on about. Me, I've never really cared how bright my engines are ...) Depending on the era of the tyres, one could hazard a guess at the diameter. Pre-WWII, a 10.50x15 might be 36" tall, not that there was a tyre of that size and that construction. From '45 to '65 the same might have been 32.22" tall, if it were 10.5" wide and had an 82% aspect ratio. But that's all guesswork. Suffice it to say that the numbers conjure up images of drag slicks, i.e. lots of rubber on a relatively small rim, but more than that I can't say.
Mickey Thompson makes a 30x12.50R15 which comes out to be 30" tall 12.5" wide for a 15" wheel. It's a drag radial tire, which is a modern style race tire. Here's a link I found that takes a modern radial size and converts the nonsense numbers into something that makes sense. It's off topic, but at least it puts some things into perspective http://www.wallaceracing.com/tire-aspect-calc.php
The Jalopy Journal
