How wide of a tire can the stock rims take?

[Guest jcrules78]

Before I purchased this Reatta, I owned an 88 IROC-Z 350 with 245/50 ZR16 Cooper Zeon A/S Tires all around. Some piece of crap cut in front of my wife while she was driving and destroyed my baby. I had put a lot of work and effort into that car too, and now it is all history. Anyway, my question here is if the 16 X 8 Reatta rims could take that size tire without greatly affecting the Speedo? If not, what is the widest section width the car can take, and with that section width, what would the aspect ratio have to be to keep the car's speedometer honest? I would love to get my Reatta handling top notch with my stock rims. Those Cooper Zeons are nice handling, nice looking all seasons and are very affordable. Any suggestions?

JCRULZ

[Guest steveskyhawk]

More importantley; How is your wife?

[bobwhite]

Here is a web site that lists the circumference of most tires so you can pick a tire that will keep the speedometer correct, or close. The site was for TRX tires, but they give usefull information about standard sizes too.

HERE

[Guest C.F.Massie]

I use this site to determine what effect changing the tire size will have on the speedometer readings, it's very useful. It also gives a pretty good perspective of the profile of the tire as you change the sizes.

http://www.miata.net/garage/tirecalc.html

[Guest jcrules78]

Thanks guys for the info. By the way, my wife is fine now; sorry to seem like I cared about the car more than my wife in that previous post. That isn't the case at all, my wife is more important than anything else in my life. The accident happened almost 2 months ago and my wife did suffer some serious bruising but is much better. Now that I don't have to worry about her health, I have been thinking about the car more. My wife and I both really enjoyed that car and I put a lot of time and money into it. Some idiot decided that getting an ice cream quickly was more important than my wife's health or my beautiful car. Jerk.

JCRULZ

[Guest jcrules78]

According to the Miata website, they say the better choice of tire if I were to upgrade section width and keep the stock rim would be 235/55 R16. There would be 0.1 difference from stock. Nice. I'm going to check and see what kind of nice tires are out there in this size.

JCRulz

[Barney Eaton]

I have been running 245/50r16 on my 1991 coupe for about a year. Using the stock 1991 rims, they do not rub on the inside or outside. The stock rim has 44.5 (1 3/4")offset

If you choose a different rim with a different offset, you could rub. PS, while I don't put a lot of miles on my car, I have excellant wear... we just drove it 670 miles one way to Topeka for the Heartland Regional meet.

[Guest jcrules78]

Nice,

What brand tires are you sporting? I had pretty great luck with those Cooper Zeon A/S I had on the Camaro. Great traction, nice looking and relatively cheap for W rated, AA Traction, A Temperature and 400 Treadwear (less than 100 bucks a piece on Summit Racing).