The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area Driveline stock 52 wheels with newer wider radials?

is there ever a cut and dry solution to tires and rims.I have stock 16x4.5 inck rims but want to up grade to a little wider updated radial tire. I want wide whites but the price is just not in the budget so opting out for the narrow whites.Any one have any suggestions on what route I should take.I have all new hub caps and trim rings to fit and i know i can upgrade my rims but not sure if these will fit the newer style ones........



one my go bald and be worst for wear but we never tire of our love for our stove bolts!

Coker Tire should have tires with a wide white wall. try them if all you need is a tire.

The 4.5" wide wheels are going to limit what width tire can be mounted on them. A 215/85/16 is really going to as big as you can safely go, and even those are a little wide for the wheels you have.

Hate to hijack a post as much as I hate to be scolded for starting a new post for a discussion currently going on. So we'll see how this goes... I am currently running Firestone 235 R16. They came new on the 50 3100 truck I recently purchased. I have put over a thousand miles on them without any complaints other than extra effort to steer when sitting still. In fact, this truck goes so strait down the road even at 70 MPH, I really am not looking forward to the possibility of having to replace them. Am I in danger of dying in a tragic and potentially fiery crash from tires too wide for my 4.5 inch rims?

Probably not. The tires being to wide on the rims if anything might cause more wear in the center of the tires over time.....

Whitelightning is correct. It's not really a safety issue from the standpoint of a tire failure, but more of a vehicle handling issue. Even that can be avoided by making sure the tire pressures are correct. I don't think that the size you're running is enough to cause too much of an issue. Now if you were running 245 or wider, then it would be more of an issue, due the lack of sidewall stability.

Tire sites such as tirerack.com will give info as to wheel width for a given tire. Too wide of tire casn cause the old wheels to split.

These kinds of tire posts would be more helpful if all the tire information was provided along with driveline changes, if any. For instance: What is the aspect ration of the 235R16 tire that was used in above posts (235/70R16 or 235/60R16 or...).

I guess I could look up stock tire diameter and do the math and figure it out myself, but just a little more information would make things so much easier.

Sorry about that David. My feeble mind could not retain all of the numbers and letters for the length of time that it takes to walk 27 feet from where my truck is parked. Sad, I know. They are 235/70R16 (I wrote it down this time). Like I mentioned earlier, I would not have chosen these tires, but they came brand new on the truck when I bought it.

I have P215/85R16 Cooper radial tires on my 54 3100 and there perfectly stable. I bought these so I can get the proper tire diameter for speedometer accuracy.


Walt Williams
La Verkin, UT

The SRM II Cooper 215/85R16 on my standard 4.5" 1954 rims has a diameter of over 31" (loaded diameter). The Cooper SRM II specified diameter (on wider wheels) is about 30" (unloaded diameter?). The 6.50x16 original standard tire had about a 28" loaded diameter.