Help needed with changing wheel sizes.


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Help needed with changing wheel sizes.

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Auto Repair Home>> CarJunky>> Open Posting

SD
New User

Sep 5, 2010, 2:11 AM

Post #1 of 3 (2612 views)

Help needed with changing wheel sizes.	Sign In

Hi.

I'm new here but glad to have found you lot cuz I'm hoping someone can help me out of a fix I'm in.

Got a VW Polo and managed to catch a granite boundary marker that was sticking out proud as I went through a farm gateway.

Front driver's side wheel has a huge buckle in the rim and the tyre.

Guess what? No spare. Found out that my wife took the car for a wheel change last year and thought she'd save money by just having the garage replace the punctured tyre with the spare rather than having the puntured tyre repaired/replaced (cost her a £iver and some eyelash fluttering - cost me my spare wheel).

Can't afford a new wheel (something to do with my having been made redundant in order to help fund my ex-employer's bank's next xmas party, I think).

Have been to the scrapyard and they have none (the wheel has 5 rather than the more common 4 bolt-holes).

My wheels are:

165/70 R14.

Have found a couple (I figured best to replace both front wheels/tyres at the same time) that are:

185/65 R14.

Can anyone advise me whether I can replace the former with the latter, please?

Thanks for reading.

Seb.

Tom Greenleaf
Ultimate Carjunky / Moderator
Tom Greenleaf profile image

Sep 5, 2010, 7:55 AM

Post #2 of 3 (2605 views)

Re: Help needed with changing wheel sizes.	Sign In

Seb - Welcome to our site and forums. Sorry for the mishap.

Know this: Wheels and tire size we heavily engineered into the car for a lot of reasons. Defeating that just plain will mess up handling intended for the car.

It's a rock and a hard place. You need the right wheels and tires for the car IMO or a ton of know how to defeat that. Speedo may not work right along with a host of things.

You may be able to get what we call "Donut Spare" tires for a song. Site is open to the world but I don't know of the specific car very well being a USA lifer.

Tires and wheels need to match. You may have ABS or traction control that would be all confused with changes. What stinks is when even a safe 1/2 worn tire fails you need TWO or worse on some cars all FOUR!

Arrgh! Check salvage yards again and again. That or new stuff is pricey as I'm sure you know.

Also: Even when and if changes work is changes alignment angles and is just a HUGE headache.

Not sure if a company ships everywhere but a cool site is www.TireRack.com if only for info it might be informative or something more local to you could work out.

Good luck. Suggestion is to keep all original sizes from me,

T

SD
New User

Sep 6, 2010, 11:19 AM

Post #3 of 3 (2591 views)

Re: Help needed with changing wheel sizes.	Sign In

Hi Tom and thanks for the welcome,

A chap on another site reckons I will be OK changing the wheels as described so I think I'll give it a whirl and see if there's any rubbing or vibrations etc.

Fortunate, in some respects (not in others) that the island on which I live has a blanket maximum speed limit of 40mph and many areas are 30, 20 and even 15mph so it's not as if I'm gonna be hacking it at national speed limits (chance would be a fine thing - LOL).

Thanks for taking the care and time to reply, mate.

Appreciated.

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