[Nikhilb2008]

A person came to our shop and was looking for tyres for his Jag which he is redoing.
It's a 1988 Jaguar sovereign. The current tyres are Dunlop Sport 100TD.

On the tyre, this is written. "This is a TD Tyre, fit only to a TD rim".

The size mentioned is "TD 220/65 VR 390".

What does that mean? I think it's a crossply tyre as the following is also written on the tyre.

"Tread 5 plies
1 rayon, 2 steel and 2 nylon

Sidewall 1 ply
1 rayon".

The tyres are pretty much destroyed. Owner wants to replace them but doesnt know what size to get.

[reignofchaos]

Measure with a ruler and tape and check the dimensions . Not so hard is it?

[suren181]

I wonder if this info would be of help, but for what it's worth

Dunlop TD Tyres

[iraghava]

Nikhil - I'm quoting the explanation below:

Fab! You've bought a BMW 525TD. Tires look a bit shoddy so you go to replace them. What the....? TD230/55ZR390? What the hell does that mean? Well my friend, you've bought a car with metric tires. Not that there's any real difference, but certain manufacturers experiment with different things. For a while, (mid 1990s) the 525TD came with arguably experimental 390x180 alloy wheels. These buggers required huge and non-conformal tires. I'll break down that classification into chunks you can understand with your new-found knowledge:

TD - ignore that. 230 = cross section 230mm. 55 = 55% sidewall height. Z=very high speed rating. R390=390mm diameter wheels. These are the equivalent of about a 15.5" wheel. There's a nice standard size for you. And you, my friend, have bought in to the long-raging debate about those tires. They are an odd size, 180x390. Very few manufacturers make them now and if you've been shopping around for them, you'll have had the odd heart-stopper at the high price. The advice from the BMWcar magazine forum is to change the wheels to standard sized 16" so there's more choice of tires. 215-55R16 for example. The technical reason for the 390s apparently is that they should run flat in the event of a puncture but that started a whole debate on their forum and serious doubts were expressed. You've been warned...

Let me know if you need any more help with these.

[Nikhilb2008]

Thanks so much Ishan and suren. Not much thanks to you sumo

Hmmm.... so, no tyre available in that size in India? The car has the original rims and they look very nice. I would hate telling the owner that he has to put some stupid 16" rim

Any of these old metric tyres available in India?

[iraghava]

Originally Posted by Nikhilb2008

Hmmm.... so, no tyre available in that size in India? The car has the original rims and they look very nice. I would hate telling the owner that he has to put some stupid 16" rim

Any of these old metric tyres available in India?

I would say finding a tyre of that size here would be almost impossible since they're hard to come by even in Europe. Then again if you do find something the age is also a factor etc. etc.

Best & the most trouble-free way is to put on a set of new 16" wheels & tyres. Maybe you can do a search of British tyre sites to see current prices of such tyres & point out to the owner that buying & importing them would turn out to be prohibitively expensive.

[greenhorn]

any chance for a retread ?

Elgitread

[gd1418]

Eeeks...retreaded tyres on a Jag sovereign??

Originally Posted by greenhorn

any chance for a retread ?