Just hoping that someone can explain this to me better....my brain is having a hard time getting around it at the moment.
On top of that I have no image hosting right now, so I can't draw out my question to explain better.
Anyways....I just bought a set of Kuhmo ecsta ASX's for my car, and looking at them for a few minutes brought this to mind:
If asymmetrical tires have a designated outside and inside, why do they not have designated sides of the car that they should go on?
Basically, if I am looking down from above on both of my front tires....one side will have a ^ shaped groove on the outside of the tire, and on the other side it is a v shape on the outside.....yet they're both rolling in the same direction.
Why wouldn't this somehow affect traction?

there should be something on the tire that says THIS direction and an arrow or something like that

i think it matters mostly for water dispersion and stuff like that as far as traction goes

when i removed my wheels i put them on the wrong side for a day on accident and i noticed i was burning em off a lot easier, so i guess it did make a pretty big difference

edit: ok i found this picture and it looks like it doeasnt matter which side the wheel is on as long as the marking on the tire that says OUTSIDE is facing the outside, at least thats what makes sense to me anyway

http://www.tirerack.com/tires/BigPic.jsp?tireMake=Kumho&tireModel=ECSTA+ASX&sidewall=Blackwall

From my experiance working at a tire store I would say that if you have it rolling in the wrong direction change it. You will wear out the tire much quicker, also you wont get as smooth a ride. Since there is 2 sides to every tire, they can be used for the right or left side, depending on how it is mounted to the wheel. make sure the passenger side, both say "right or rotation -->" and for the driver side, "left or <---"

Technically, it would. Asymmetrical tires are meant more for side to side grip than holeshots. The pattern is good enough for water dispersal, but its main goal is to grip from the side. Thats why drag radials are all directional as opposed to asymmetrical.

Right....I guess what I was wondering, was why they didn't make designated passenger side and drivers side tires.

If you look at this picture, the outside(right side in this pic.) is definately a much different tread pattern than the inside of the tire. This is most noticeable if you look at the center stripe, and how it's cut.
It still bothers me though....if you look at the big picture that turbo8u posted, the sidewall that you can see there is marked "outside". That is the side that I can see on all four of my tires. Look at that picture, and picture in your head that you're looking at a Drivers side front tire, and then picture it as a passenger side front tire, and which direction it would then be rotating in.....
???
I had two people at the tire shop tell me that the only thing that matters with asymmetrical tires is how you mount them on the rim, and that's it, because they are not directional specific tires.
Guess I still don't get it.

maybe its just with a better performance tire......but its kinda funny that not to long ago it didn't matter and in most cases still doesn't, case in point "sir do you want the white lettering in or out" direction wouldn't really mean squat then because the tire was made to run black walls or white wall. Me personally I don't think driving on the street, anyone would really see a traction difference or notice that much just driving kinda normal because roads suck and have alot of varibals that makes the little difference it would make hard to tell on the street really. Ive swapped rims and tires around quite a bit not liking the rim pattern direction or just moving the front to the back and not following the recommended squence and didn't notice a lack or gain in the tires performance fwd and rwd, they were balanced and rode smooth and handled just the same. And as for the stance of the sidewalls that also has alot of varibals such as the flatness on with your parked on which to the naked eye looks level but isn't really and the curb weight on the individual tire may have changed for whatever reason ie: worn suspension, added/removed components to the car, individual tire pressure and temp it was filled at expansion/contraction (32 pounds of hot air takes more space then 32 of cold air) blah blah ect ect.And like I said maybe certain tires are different.

On FWD cars and AWD cars for some reason most tire manufacturers recomend asymetric tires (MY guess its due to the increased duty that front tires receive being that they brake the car AND are the power wheels so they wear faster...thereby you have to rotate the tires more often to keep the wear distribution more even)

With asymetrics though your tire rotation is limited to mooving the back tires to the front on the same side ..i use asymetric and they are the best all arround tire i have had on the eclipse

yeah.

Asymetrical tires have a distinct inside/outside tread block design. They are designed to be mounted with the outside to the outside of the car, regardless of rotation direction. Directional tires are symetrical and can only be mounted in one rotation direction. If you want to move a directional tire to the other side of the car, it must be dis-mounted and "flipped" on the wheel, to ensure correct rotation. The Evo's A046's are this way.

Asymetrical tires are easier for most consumers to live with since they can be moved around easily, and they are also usually quieter. The trade-off is performance due to construction differences. A symetrical tire is built (constructed) differently than an asymetrical one.

A good example of an asymetrical tire that should be symetrical is the Kumho v700 Victoracer. The carcass of the tire is beveled so that the ends overlap like this ----\\----- The problem is that if you run the tire the wrong way, and hard (on a racetrack for instance) the tread seam can start to come apart. I have the pictures to prove it!

I didn't read all the posts but i think he got all 4 either left or right tires...

Originally posted by CarbonFiberRST
I didn't read all the posts but i think he got all 4 either left or right tires...

Thats the point. There is no left and right with asymetric tires. They're the same, you just have to make sure that the side marked outside is mounted to the outside of the rim.

Yup.......which is what the shop didn't do at first......
Funny, while they were putting the tires on my car, I asked the guy behind the counter kind of skeptically if the guys back there were paying attention to that, 'cause they were ripping through putting on my tires so fast, I couldn't see how they were. He told me that they had been doing this for a long time and it would be fine. Sure enough, when they brought my car out, the back passenger side tire was mounted backwards on the rim. I had to wait an extra 15 minutes for them to put it right. Guy made sure to say "whew, I'm glad you caught that!". Personally, I wish that they would've been paying attention enough that I wouldn't have had to.......:wary
Oh well.

Thanks to especially Bluemoon and 992gnt for further explaining this to me....
I get it now.

sidenote:
After driving on these tires for the better part of a week, in which I experienced most typical weather common for Chicago at this time of the year: Dry roads, wet roads, snow, then slush.
I can say that I am quite happy with them.
Now, I just hope that they last a long time.

nm