Is there a mechanic in the house? Tire Question.

Lindsey Lohan

My car needed a bunch of work to pass state inspection. As I'm a bit on the broke side, I've been doing it piece by piece and with the help of friends and the internet. I bought some used tires on craigslist - they're pretty much brand new and in great shape - but they're already mounted on rims. My shop said it would be $52 to remount them on my rims. The thing is, according to the net, the rims should actually fit my car's bolt pattern (I'm a 2000 Kia Sephia, they're from a 2001 Ford Escort).

Is there any reason I shouldn't pop my tires off and just swap them for the ones I just bought (aside from having to find a way to ditch the old ones?)

wmelon

They should fit the car fine. You may want to make sure the bolt mating surface is the same style. There are two different styles currently being used, one is a conical self centering nuts and the other is a hemispherical self centering nut.

You'll know when you put them on if they're not going to work. They'll hit something in the wheel well.

MushroomStick

There's a little more to it than just the bolt pattern matching. For instance: a while back my best friend bought some Corvette rims for his Trans Am - the bolt pattern matched, but the bolting surface or whatever was too close to the outer edge of the rear wheels and required spacers so the tires wouldn't rub up against the suspension/inside of the wheel well/etc.

zilo

I would just get the tires remounted and craigslist the wheels for $50.

Awk

Are the wheels balanced? The shop will balance your new rims after mounting. It might be worth it.

Lindsey Lohan

Basically guy put four new tires on his car and the engine burned out within a week. Probably let my shop mount and balance them and if they do match Ill have them mount my best leftover tire on one and have a fullsize spare instead of a donut.

dlinfiniti

if you're in the process of doing other work on your car to get it up to spec, you could see if you could talk the shop into doing other things that you arent capable of doing on your own and knocking the price down on all of that

chrishallett83

Just because the bolt pattern is the same, does not mean the offset will be. Your plan to do the tyre/wheel shuffle is a smart one.

MyDcmbr

The offset is going to be almost identical for a Kia Sephia and a Ford Escort.

The only thing you need to worry about is that the center bore on a Sephia is larger than that on an Escort.

Hawkstone

It takes only a few minutes to jack up a car and throw on a tire to see if it fits. At most a half hour total to put on all 4. If you are low on cash you really should try them out and see before getting them remounted and balanced. You need to check bolt pattern, center Bore, wheel size and off set. Essentially if the wheel goes on Pattern and bore are fine. Once the lugs are tight with the front end in the air, the tire should not have any wobble and have good clearence fromt he inside of the tire to the suspension if the off set is correct. After if the wheels are not the same size :ie R15 or R17 etc...you need to turn the wheels to ensure you have good wheel well clearance. Then if that all goes well put the car on the ground and get somebody to help you push down the front to ensure that with suspension compression there is no rub on the wheel well.

tinyfist

Lindsey Lohan wrote:

Basically guy put four new tires on his car and the engine burned out within a week. Probably let my shop mount and balance them and if they do match Ill have them mount my best leftover tire on one and have a fullsize spare instead of a donut.

If this means you're going to end up riding around with 3 of the craigslist tires + 1 of your leftover tires, I would not recommend it. Tires should only be swapped in 2's or 4's.

Lindsey Lohan

tinyfist wrote:

Lindsey Lohan wrote:

Basically guy put four new tires on his car and the engine burned out within a week. Probably let my shop mount and balance them and if they do match Ill have them mount my best leftover tire on one and have a fullsize spare instead of a donut.

If this means you're going to end up riding around with 3 of the craigslist tires + 1 of your leftover tires, I would not recommend it. Tires should only be swapped in 2's or 4's.

No it means I would drive with the 4 craigslist tires with one of my old ones mounted on one of the craigslist rims (if they fit) in the trunk as a spare instead of the useless donut I have in there now. I think that's the route I'm going to go...

Derrick

You also are going to want to borrow a torque wrench from someone if you change the wheels.

When I worked in a mechanic shop, we would let guys come in and torque their own wheels if they asked nicely (for no charge.)