You probably noticed that tyres are full of little symbols, codes, numbers… but do you know what they mean?

Well, let’s try and make things a little bit clearer… today we will teach you how to read a tyre!

Let’s start from numbers and letters…

The number 295 shows the nominal section width expressed in millimetres. The number 30 indicates instead the ratio between nominal section height and nominal section width.
The following letter indicates the structure on the tyre, in this case R stays for a tyre with a radial construction.
The number 19 shows the rim diameter expressed in inches, the number 100 expresses the load index, it indicates the load carrying capacity per tyre, while the letter V shows the maximum speed that can be reached with that specific tyre.

The brand and the product name are obviously indicated… in this example, since we are talking about a winter tyre, we can also find the letters M+S which mean mud & snow together with the mountain symbol.
Finally there is the word “tubeless”: that means the tyre is conceived to be used without tube.

Well… as you can see a tyre can tell us a lot of things!
But it’s not over… the European Union is about to promulgate a new directive, for which from 2012 tyres will also have to indicate the fuel consumption.

Tyres that will be mounted from 2012 on, will have to be fitted with an identification label (that you can see below) which will have to report particular references on a scale from A to G to indicate the fuel efficiency class, the wet grip class and the noise level, expressed in decibel.

The lesson is over! Now you have more elements to chose your next set of tyres!

See you next time!