I was at a yard sale the other day, and I saw a pile of 4 tires. I thought to myself, there's no way they are 16's. I walked over to them, and they were!

I then said, no way they all match; they did.

They can't be a good brand; Firestone Firehawk GTA (I think that's good, sounds neat!)

No way they are all worn the same; they were new.

Lastly, I said to myself, there is no way they are cheap... $80 for all of them!

I had them mounted and balanced the next day, and brought them home to put on my car. Well, besides the fact that my rotors are rustier than my 1/4 panels (car's been sitting since December), they went on without a hitch!

Problem is, they look so tiny! They are 205/50/16... which I wasn't really thinking about when I got them. Original tire size is 245/50/16 I believe right?

Will I have problems with this size? This brand? Model of tire?

 

only problem i can see is it might throw your speedo off by maybe 1 mph ...but other than that i dont see a problem run em and enjoy em for that price if they have good tread then you stole em

 

Well, good! I was affraid of turning and the rim hitting the road or something!

Yah, they are so new the little spikey things are still all over them! The guy who had them said he bought them for his Lexus car, but took them off a week later because it was too harsh a ride.

 

You basically stole those tires, nice find

They are pretty damn skinny, but for daily driving with no craziness they are alright, but you put some power to those tires.....will make for a nice burnout...

 

yeh they are pretty skinny but hey who cares , good job i wish yardsales around here sold rims with tires

 

yeah you can probably spin them like crazy if you floor it.

 

aaron7-

Your tires look too small because they are too small! Many years ago, I owned an '85 Mustang GT and was stationed on Guam with it. I needed tires for it and got a deal on some 205/60 15's, so I put them on. The problem I ran into was accelerated tire wear. The front end of a v8 car is heavy and I rounded the outside edges of those tires rather quickly. Also, the tires on the back suffered from reduced traction and, consequently, they didn't last very long either. I think that Mustang was probably a good 600 lbs. lighter than a 3rd gen. In short, you did get the tires for a song... good on ya for that!! Just don't expect them to last... they're just too small.

 

some of the information posted on this board is ridiculously inaccurate.

those tires are 24" tall even. the stock tires are almost 26" tall.

your speedometer is going to read roughly 10% off. if it says you're going 60, you're actually going somewhere around 54.

additionally, you just effectively upped your gear ratio by moving to such a different size of tire. if you used to tach 3000 rpms on the highway at 75, you're now going to tach 3300 to actually go 75mph. this will drop your gas mileage, but it might make the car feel faster.

you lost about an inch of ground clearance as well. be careful over bumps.

your odometer is also going to incorrectly gauge the number of miles on the car while those tires are on it.

also with how skinny they are and how short they are, your rims are a lot less protected, and your handling and traction will suffer as well.

and i'm not even gonna mention the look of them on the car.

basically it's just an all around bad idea, especially to have them on the rear axle.

 

i guess there like riding on your spare donut tire.. i rode on one for a few hours looking for a tire shop, not fun to drive in the rain

 

Am I missing something? He said he got 205-50-16. And stock is 245-50-16. So his new tires are skinnier but the same height, right? So how is this going to throw his speedo off? 245-50-16 is what my IROC came with. Maybe I'm wrong.

Say you go from a 235-55-16 to a 245-50-16 how much would that throw off the speedo and everything?

 

Well, actually the number you see there for the height, is for the height of the sidewall, not the actual tire. It is also proportional (a fraction) to the width of the tire, so the height of the sidewall is greatly affected by the width of the tire.
I found this site right here on TGO, it'll tell you everything you need to know about switching from one tire or wheel size to another: http://www.miata.net/garage/tirecalc.html
-Efrain.

 

I would waste em on a friday night.

 

That's backasswards.

"245" is the tread width in millimeters. "50" refers to the sidewall in a percentage relation to the tread, ie the sidewall is 50% of width of the tread section. "R" denotes radial, and "16" stands for 16 inch wheels. Hope this clears things up!



To the original poster, the tires will wear fast and don't for the love of christmas get anywhere near a curb! You notice the lip of the wheel sticks out way past the tire, right?

 

A 245/50/16 tire is 25.64" tall with a 4.88" sidewall height and a 205/50/16 tire is 24.07" tall with a 4.035" sidewall height. So your car will be about .88" taller than stock and have about 1" less overall width. For 80 bucks you cannot beat it for daily driven tires. You will most likely will have accelerated tire wear and your speedo will be off a little. Also, as mentioned above these tires will act as a lower gear. The calculations page will help you determine how far off your readings will be.