Test Drive Kia Sephia 1993 - 2001

Non-standard move

Everything suited in the car, except for the low tire profile. For six months, Michelin rubber with a 60 percent profile came to complete disrepair. Most of all, naturally, it got the front wheels from a meeting with all sorts of interesting irregularities, like that: laid in winter asphalt, resembling dots hatches, construction garbage, details of someone's transmissions and even fragments of someone's furniture. On two tires waving hernia. Over and wheel drives. And while they did not turn into an aluminum scrap, and the suspension into the didactic set for the school office of physics, they decided to put the tires higher than 185/65R14. It is noteworthy that on that day the shinnik football team won the match on someone else's field.


For the European version of Sephia, there are quite enough 60 percent rubber, but only if it is operated on the European roads. We did not find any other 14-inch tires for the Kia Sephia of other 14-inch tires for this model: 175/70R13 and 185 / 60R14. Radius of these tires under static load, respectively, 264 and 263 mm. The difference between them, as well as the difference of the path passed in one turnover is 0.37%, which does not exceed the permissible speedometer error and completely imperceptibly when the car is moving.


Who loves softer, chooses the 13th caliber with a decent reserves of rubber and air, and who the joy will prefer the 14th with a low profile. It will be either sausage on the blesses, because the 70 percent profile is too high for the active movement (the sephia behavior with this shoerazer is described in the motor 3 last year), or it will have to often buy a pair of tires 185/60R14, the sidewalls of which will go down after each Pits. There is no third. We took it ourselves 185/65r14.


Only 9 mm rubber and do not know the car. In multiple move, the comfort and smoothness of the movement significantly improved. Sephia easily swallows what it stumbled on it. Practically disappeared foreign sounds in the cabin. The static tire radius 185/65R14 is 273 mm and theoretically in one turnover of the wheel is covered with a distance of 3.4% more than on standard rubber. That is, during the time while on the odometer, 1 km falls out, the machine runs 1034 meters. Do not forget that the car's ground clearance also rose 9 mm.


Now about side effects. Bye on the literal sense of the word, meaning lateral adhesiveness (sometimes it is called lateral resistance or impedance resistance), or the tire property is not frozen in the turn. The regular tires 185 / 60R14 behaved in a very approximately on the water, and the thought, without a screech, was stacked in turns. In general, the lower the profile, the more stable the wheel in the lateral direction than it is higher than the larger the displacement of the wheel center relative to the contact stain with the road, which in certain circumstances leads to early demolition of one or both axes. Naturally, the 65 percent profile does not allow to pass turns as famously as a 60 percent. And if, with an increase in the percentage, do not make a ride amendment, then the rapid passage of turns will be accompanied by a trunk swimming, whistle of rubber and slow rheal-stabilization. Much, of course, depends on the model of the tire itself, the tread pattern and everything that the average driver has the right to be unusted. But on the example of the new tires 185 / 65R14 Hercules Ultra Plus IV in relation to Kia Sephia Leo, it can be said that the side effect makes itself felt on dry asphalt in a perpendicular turn only at speeds for 60, and in a stupid for 80-90 km / h and In both cases, it is controlled and easy to rule. On the puddles, the difference in the lateral resistance of the tires of various profiles (next other parameters) is minimized.


Anyway, a 65 percent profile made a ride more comfortable, relatively secured the wheels, suspension and bottom of the body from all sorts of reinforced concrete adventures, leaving the opportunity to ride active. I would call it the Russian version of Kia Sephia LEO. Maybe, after us, the Russian size is trying to try on and domestic kia from Kaliningrad? The higher the expensive, the closer to the people!


P. S. And I had to go through the scheduled, that is, to call for the warranty service and open the hood. The reaction of the station on the arrival of the most famous in this city Sephia LEO resembled a commercial: Mom! Mum! Aunt Asya arrived! The set of services at the second is similar to the first change of engine oil and filter and nuts broach. That is, the plant manufacturer, as it were, is sure that after 15 thousand kilometers in the car, no other processes, in addition to the darkening of the oil, does not occur. Oh well..
 
Ivan V. Paderin
 

A source: Magazine Motor [№09 / 1997]