The Stovebolt Site Forums Welcome! Welcome Centre Do It Yourself (DITY) Gallery 1946 Chevy 1/2Ton in Utah - "Here We Go"

I hear you on the price. I don't know if you'll be able to find whitewalls in a "normal" 16" tire. They're getting hard to find on relatively common 15" tires these days. I looked at the 85 series tires but didn't like the look of most of them. The treads were too aggressive and most looked like off road tires. The ones I did find that I liked were $200+.

I like the look of blackwalls on the truck so I found some 75 series Firestones on Amazon for $94 each. That was 3 years ago, though.

The "75" and "85" number in metric tire nomenclature refers to the height of the sidewall relative to the width of the tire. A 225x85 R16 tire has a sidewall height that is 85% of the width of the 225mm tread, or 191.25mm. Double that number, convert it to inches and add it to 16" to get the approx. overall diameter of your tire. That gives you approx. 31" in diameter.

Anyway, you can look at other 16" tire sizes with similar widths and calculate the overall diameter (unless the tire seller lists it in the specs) and shoot for something close to the original size with a shorter sidewall height.

My tires ended up being about 29" in diameter, I think.

The larger diameter enables driving the truck at 55-65mph without revving the engine so high. The smaller the tire diameter, the higher the engine will have to rev at all speeds.

One thing to think about is that the tires will be on your truck for a relatively long time. You don't want to "settle" for something you're not happy with after they're installed.

I've found that the extra money spent on something for my vehicles that I really wanted or needed is soon forgotten when I'm enjoying the vehicle. I've already put 10,000+ miles on these tires. When It's time to replace them, I will spend the extra dough to get tires closer to the 30-31" diameter since I drive on the freeway every week.