I have a 98 Civic. It came with a fake spare tire. I bought a used 14" rim and a used tire to use as the spare and threw away the fake spare.
It is now, sadly, time to retire the Honda after over 260,000 miles of near flawless performance. I bought a 2013 Kia Rio SX. It has 17" rims and NO spare tire - just a can of stuff to put in the tire and an electric air pump. The used spare tire I got for the Honda is less than 1" smaller in diameter compared to the Kia tire - much smaller difference than the fake Honda spare.
What problems are going to occur if I use my Honda spare as a spare for the Kia?
First of all, it is not a Fake Spare. It is a temporary spare. Have you tried to put the wheel on the Kia ? If there is not room for the 14 inch to fit where it should just having it lay in the back is a bad idea. You could probably use it to get of the road and to a shop but that is all I would do.
I think you’re heading for trouble here. It doesn’t appear that you know if the brake hardware will fit inside the wheel or if the tire is too wide for the wheel well. You also appear to have no idea if the offset is correct. Even without those issues, one inch is a lot. You’d never want to put that on your drive axle, so you might have to switch two tires at roadside. If you want a full-size spare, I suggest getting something that’s proper for this car. Since you have a tire repair kit, maybe a compact spare (if you can find a proper one) would be fine as a supplement in this case.
It also seems like you’ll be giving up a lot of cargo space in a car that small, but that’s your business, not mine. As mentioned above, you do want this thing properly secured.
My ‘98 Civic came with a real temporary spare, not a fake one.
I too bought a full size spare because I do a lot of traveling in mine, but I kept both.
You obviously have more money to spend than I do, because I’m still driving my ‘98 Civic at 305,000 miles, so how much are a used rim and a used tire that are the right size going to cost you that you’d risk driving on a wheel that is the wrong size?
First, you would need the bolt pattern and center hole to fit your car and the offset be close and the 14 " tire can’t be much thicker than the 17. Then you would have to make sure the 14" rim would have the right shape to fit over the brake caliper of a car designed with 17" wheels. Extremely unlikely.
The easiest way to find out is to try bolting it on your new car and see if everything matches and also that the tire sidewall is not touching anything when going down the road.
I’ve tried to sell a couple of those for $2 each at garage sales, but nobody ever wants them. Even at $2. So I can understand why you used that disposal method. You’d think somebody could use a tire like that. But I guess not.
I’m not sure if by fake you mean the standard temporary spare or something else. If it is the standard temporary spare, around here they are used for lake dock wheels. You weld a pipe in the center for a hub and mount an axle on them. Or you can buy regular dock wheels at the farm store for about $50. At any rate the temporary spares are in just about every junk car so the price is between $10-20 each depending on the condition.
Agree with all the others though on checking the fit. You can’t really be that far off on the drive axles so if this is an AWD or 4WD, it can’t be used at all. If used, handling will be a problem as well. So agree just go get a regular temporary spare for $100 or so. They are good to get you to where you can get a tire fixed or replaced.
