First off, please excuse my noobish sounding question - I'm the kind of guy that's rolled on steelies and bought used tires for most of my driving career and just recently have gotten interested in purchasing some quality shoes for my car.

I'm looking into getting a set of Volk CE28N's for my civic in 14 x 5.5 size. I'm assuming the 5.5 is the width of the wheel in inches. What is confusing to me is that tire widths are in mm, and more than one width can fit a specific wheel size. For instance, BFG drag radials are offered in 205/50R14, 215/60R14, and 225/45R14 - which sizes [any of them? all of them? none of them?] will fit this rim?

Thanks.

 

Only the 205/50/14 will fit the 5.5 inch wide wheel. The 215/60/14 requires at least a 6 inch wide wheel and the 225/45/14 requires at least a 7 inch wide wheel.

 

Thanks Clay.

 

With a tire size like 195/50-15, this means:

195 is the width of the tread, in mm
50 is the "aspect ratio", meaning that the sidewall height is .50 * 195 mm
15 is the wheel diameter, in inches

You can look up the approved range of rim widths for any make, model, and size of tire, either on the tire manufacturer's website, or on the website of a tire retailer like the Tire Rack. That will tell you whether a certain rim size is approved for a given size tire. Also keep in mind that at the very low end of the range, the tire may appear "bulging" out from the wheel, and at the very high end, the tire may appear "stretched" onto the wheel.

You also want to get a tire whose outer diameter is close to your stock size, preferably with a difference of less than 2 percent. You can check this using a tire calculator like this one.

I would also suggest getting 15" wheels rather than 14". There are not a lot of choices for 14" performance tires, whereas there are a lot of choices in 15". Including the BFG drag radials, which come in 205/50-15, if that's what you're looking for, as well as many, many other choices.