I picked up the wheels and the tires today for 2006 Sentra. The wheels and tires are from 2008 Sentra. The wheels are in mint condition but one of the tires is not. One of the shocks of the car were worn out so that tire is cupped. I will be taking the wheels to the mechanic on Monday for installation. Until then I need some advice.
2 tires on my car 195/55/16 (OEM size) are in a good condition. 2 are worm out that I was planning to replace before the winter sets in. Now that I will be replacing all the wheels and don’t want to put that cupped 205/55/16 tire on my car, I am curious if I can put 2 195/55/16 on the front and leave two 205/55/16 on the rear. The difference is about 1.3 inches per revolution. I plan to replace all 4 when Costco puts specific tires I want (BFGoodrich - Advantage T/A Sport) on sale, probably one to two months.
I understand this is not ideal. This car never goes on the highway, just local errands, speeds less than 40mph.
Comments welcome, in terms of safety, messing up any vehicle component etc.
Why do you need 120.00 tires on a city vehicle ? There are a lot of tires that will give good service for less money . I even put a house brand for 70.00 a piece and ran that S10 pickup for 5 years and did go on the highway.
I agree, the only issue is if you have AWD or 4WD, then don’t. I dunno about $120 tires. I put Generals on my Pontiac for about $600 which I thought was cheap, and Goodyear Weather Ready on my Acura for about $1000. I’m happy with both.
Thats a valid question and I do not like to spend that cash for city running car.
I live a little outside of NYC. The area is hilly, with a lot of slopes that do not get plowed quickly. During winter, black ice is rather common. Usually, the plows show up after 9 am, after the morning rush is out and both of us leave before 8 am that includes a school drop off. A while ago, following the same principle, I put Fuzion Touring ($82 including mounting balancing etc). They served well for 2 years but after that, they became dangerous, in spite of a lot of treads left. They started skidding on 1/10 inch of snow. I replaced them immediately. That lost my interest in cheaping out in tires.
All tires that perform relatively well during winter are at least $95 each without installation and balancing. I have Vredestein quatrac 5, General Altimax RT43, BFGoodrich - Advantage T/A Sport and Toyo Celsius on my mind. All cost between $95-$120. I may skimp on other things but not on tires and brakes. Saving $200-$300 or so is not worth a crash. A minor fender bender will shoot up insurance by 100s and probably total my Sentra. Plus, I do not want to get into another monthly payment.
You get the idea…
That said, any tires out there that are not well known but perform similar to the above-mentioned ones? I will research if there are any, before taking money out of my wallet. Thanks in advance for pointing them out.
Using different tires front to rear can cause the vehicle to perform unpredictably in emergency situations - and the more different the tires are, the more likely and the more severe this can be.
Unfortunately, the only way to tell if this is a problem is to perform emergency maneuvers - and if this isn’t during a test in a facility with lots of runoff, then ……
In this case, these tires are a different size and probably different brands, so the risk is somewhat elevated. Caution should be the word.
you are going to dismount your 2 (195) tires from old rims and have them put on the new rims so you have all 4 new rims on car? i did it. got 4 nice “looking” rims and 3 were bent and mounted my old tires on them. sold whole set in 9 months. hated vibration. but they looked good. thats what matters sometimes
The front ones are disk brakes and the rear ones are drum brakes so my guess is, there is no ABS on the car. (My understanding is, ABS is present on disk brakes only. Pls correct me if I am wrong.)
That’s my concern too. Looks are not imp. I am throwing fancy rims away and putting generic black wheels on with no hubcaps.
@CapriRacer, Totally agree. That is the reason I don’t plan to put them for more than 1 or 2 months.
Plus, the car’s AC is shot so it doesn’t get used much in summer.
Yes, one is bent to the point that it vibrates above 40-45mph. Other two are slightly bent but vibrate at 50+mph. While the car rarely goes on the highway, I would like it to be highway capable, should the need arises. Until now, the annual inspection missed it but this year, it was made clear that I need to fix these.
Plus, I got a rather good deal for these wheels, so decided to change it
I won’t buy a car without steel rims. The salt ariybs here causes leaks at the bead area fo the rim after 4-5 years, my Camry rims don’t leak at all agter 7 1/2 years.
A final update on this thread. The mechanic installed the wheels with the tires it came with. Only the cupped tire is what he is worried about but when he took the car out for a ride, he thinks for summer, it will work. Just before the winter sets in, he will take a look again and then we will decide if I should replace 2 or all tires.
