I have 2 different brand tires on back maybe... One is goodyear and will be one is radial. Same sizes and everything but my did picked it up at the tire shop where I live for $20. Its just used still has a ton of tread. ONly thing is it is a mud and snow tire. Will this do anything to my car?

 

it should be allright, but the 2 diffrent tread patters might work agianst each other and may cause some traction problems or possibly irregular steering, persoanlly i would get a a good new tire and not mess with some used garbage. spending the extra 50$ i think is WELL worth it to know you will have traction to keep your car in one piece and more importantly yourself save/

 

As long as both tires are the same height they MUST be and as long as they are both radials it should be ok but if one is taller than the other it will eventually tear up the rearend. If ya got any questions email me I was a Service manager for Goodyear for several years so Tires are kinda a specialty to me.

 

and the differential will have to make up the difference. But, it should not be too much of a problem.

 

I dont have any pictures of the tires. I wish i had a digital Camera. The tires are both low profile just the Radial says mud and snow on them and the goodyear say eagle I think. Im gunna go out in a little to check out both tires.

 

Do yourself a favor, and do not use used tires! Just stick to the new ones where you know you're getting new and the shop is semi-reputable (or at least has a name to keep)

Lets learn from my friend and his turbo MR2.

Goes to the pull-a-thon, finds an MR2 with 4 beautiful (looked brandnew) tires. No flatspots, no nothing... not even splash from rain splashing mudd on them... he takes them. Puts them on his car... drives around. Coming down route 9 one night around midnight front LEFT tire blows out, crossed a lane of traffic, narrowly missed a tree, ran over like 3 of those metal dohickys on the side of the road that do nothing (looks like those stopsign poles, on about 3 feet high) and stopped on a churches front porch.

Bent his a-arms, destroyed his oil pan, destroyed his exhaust, crossmember gone, GFX gone, bent spindles, mirrors torn off (one my narowly missing the tree, the other from one of the poles) and it probalby had a bent frame... Needless to say he totalled it.

Personally, when it comes to tires and brakes, I wouldn't settle for anything less than new.

(Engine ran though... ran well in fact. i tried to explain to him that his engine would do good in the hands of an MR2 enthusiest looking for some speed, but he wouldn't listen, another turbo 4 banger bites the dust).

 

Guys, give him a little more detail!

It will probably NOT affect your steering since they're rear tires and it's a solid-rear-axle car (probably wouldn't do much even in an independent-rear car).

It WILL affect handling. A mud/snow tire has a much different tread pattern than a high-performance tire. The mud/snow tire will have more open space and less rubber in contact with the road. This will give it worse traction in dry or wet conditions and better traction in snow/mud conditions.

It MAY harm your rear end, IF the tires have different diameters. If the diameters are different (and I mean, get out there with a measuring tape and measure them, don't trust what it says on the sidewall) then one tire will be turning more rotations than the other to go the same distance. This is similar to when you go around a corner, one wheel turns faster than the other. If you have a posi / limited slip differential, this will put wear on the limited slip mechanism and over time will cause it to wear out sooner. It will not affect an open rear or one with a locker (you probably don't have a locker, they only came on a few cars from the factory) because with these types of differential, one wheel is allowed to turn at a different rate than the other without hurting anything.

If the tires have different widths, it really won't affect anything except handling, with the wider tire having better traction than the narrower one.

Ride quality may be affected, since you may get funny harmonics or vibrations from having different tires. And tire wear may be uneven (wearing the inside or outside edge more) on the mismatched pair of rear tires, if the diameter is different. Also, being different brands and types, one tire will probably wear faster than the other.

If money is really an issue and you can't afford a matching set of rear tires, and you have an open differential, I wouldn't worry too much about it. Just put the mud/snow on the driver's side wheel to limit wheelspin (since the passenger side effectively gets more torque than the driver's side in an open differential). If you have a posi, get a matched set as soon as you can afford it.

There are many reasonably-priced tires that are worth using, search on here for a few threads about tires for specific recommendations.

P.S. As mentioned above, if they are both radials (as opposed to bias) it's not a really big deal. If one is bias and the other radial, they will handle very differently, causing handling problems. However, most tires these days are radials, the only bias tires I've seen lately were truck tires. Goodyear Eagles are all radials as far as I'm aware, and I would assume a tire brand "Radial" would be a radial.