tonee_

What tire size would you recommend for a slight stretch (but not too much)? In the picture below you can see how meaty the tires are that are currently on the rim. They are 195/50 and I was wondering if you guys would recommend 175/50 or 165/50? The car will be lowered a lot more once I find time to roll the fenders. Let me know what you guys think I should go with.

wolfy47

i really wouldnt go smaller than what you already have...it looks like you are already skinnier than stock

toyomatt84

iTrader: (1)

Even if you bought the 175/50/15's (not a real tire size) for the car, and assuming you have a DX (anything non-EX has a smaller tire diameter)... they'd still be 10.56% too short for your car. This is way beyond safe limits, and will make your car's speedometer/odometer completely inaccurate. Sticking with the 175 treadwidth, the smallest sidewall you could run safely would be a 65 series sidewall (so 175/65/15). But, the narrowest wheel those can safely run on, would be a 6" wide wheel.

To make a long story short, the smallest tire you could run on those wheels safely would be a 195/55/15.

CRXSTI

In addition to what Toyomatt mentioned about the speedometer reading, keep in mind two very important things:
1) Too short of a tire will most likely have too low of a load-index rating. This means the weight of your car will be too much for the tire to bear.
2) In addition to using too SHORT (and therefore, most likely too weak) of a tire, you also want to STRETCH the tire beyond its intended limits. This too will lead to premature failure.

We all have to share the roads together. If this will be an OFF-ROAD set of wheels, go for it. If you're driving on the same roads as the rest of us, please show some common respect and courtesy, because using this type of fitment is dangerous, and it puts innocent people at risk. You wouldn't appreciate it if a lifted pickup drove over your car because he didn't see you, and most of us wouldn't appreciate it if your tires blew out and you spun out in front of us.

Since you're asking for recommendations, I would recommend not using wheels with that offset at all. However, if you're looking for more information on making low offset wheels fit on regular cars by using short, skinny tires a good resource that has been around for a long, long time is available here:

http://www.lowridermagazine.com/index.html