My daughter has a 2008 Honda CR-V 4 wheel drive and her front passenger tire blew out and she replaced it with her vehicle’s spare. (Tire: 225/65/R17 102T, and spare is T155/90D17 101M)

Can she buy 1 new tire or does she have to replace 2 tires on the same axle or all 4 tires? I didn’t see any information on that issue in the vehicle’s manual and I’ve never owned a car with 4 wheel drive or all wheel drive (so I don’t know for sure). The only thing I see in the manual is advice not to drive with the spare in excess of 50 mph, to replace the spare when you can, and the spare should be inflated with 60 PSI.

My concern is whether just replacing 1 or 2 tires will damage the car’s 4 wheel drive system since the diameter of the tires won’t be exactly the same (a new tire will have a larger diameter).

Thanks in advance for any responses.

 

If the other 3 are worn it would be best to replace all 4.

 

It depends on the amount of tread left on the remaining 3.
If they are almost new, you can buy 1 new and not think much of it.
If they are sort of worn 1/2 to 2/3 of tread, she can buy a used one with the similar amount of tread and not think much of it.
If they are low, buy all 4 and do not think much of it.

The recommendations to have all 4 tires to be exactly the same is highly overrated and ABS takes care of any inequality in traction just fine. You want to stay with similar traction rating, of course.

 

This is poor advice.

 

Says who?
Tell this to thousands of tire shops across the continent who replace a single tire and to their customers who continue to drive happily for tens of thousands of miles ever after.