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Sidewall

215/50R16

215 mm across the tread, a sidewall 50% of that — 108 mm — on a 16-inch rim. That puts the whole wheel at 24.5 inches tall.

108 mm sidewall621 mm · 24.5"
Sidewall
4.23"
108 mm
Overall
24.5"
621.4 mm
Circumference
76.9"
1.952 m
Revs per mile
824
per minute at 60 mph

What it needs to sit on

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It mounts on a rim between 6" and 8" wide, and the tread follows the rim: roughly 5 mm of section width for every half-inch, so about 205 mm across at the narrow end and 225 mm at the wide one. Written the way lift kits and wheel wells are, it is a 24.5×8.5R16 — tall by wide, in inches.

What goes wrong on this size

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2 drivers have filed a complaint. 0 of them ended in a crash, and nobody was hurt. Nobody died.

2 of them name what let go, and it is most often tread separation. B.f.goodrich is named more than any other brand.

What let goComplaints
tread separation2

Where the wheel is named, 1 of 1 were on the rear, and 0 on the front.

What fits instead

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Same 16-inch rim, height within 3%. Past that the speedometer starts lying and things begin to rub.


SizeHeightRide heightSpeedo reads 60, you doCompare
195/55R1624.4" -0.1 %-0.3 mm60.0 mphside by side
235/45R1624.3" -0.6 %-1.8 mm59.7 mphside by side
205/50R1624.1" -1.6 %-5.0 mm59.0 mphside by side
225/50R1624.9" +1.6 %+5.0 mm61.0 mphside by side
205/55R1624.9" +1.7 %+5.3 mm61.0 mphside by side
225/45R1624.0" -2.0 %-6.3 mm58.8 mphside by side

Same height, different rim

Bigger rim, same overall height. Sharper steering, harsher ride, and far less rubber between your wheel and the next pothole.


185/65R15120 mm sidewall — 12% more
235/40R1794 mm sidewall — 13% less
215/55R15118 mm sidewall — 10% more
215/45R1797 mm sidewall — 10% less
185/50R1793 mm sidewall — 14% less
245/50R15123 mm sidewall — 14% more

If you fit something taller

A taller tire covers more ground per turn, so the needle reads low and the odometer counts short. Over ten thousand miles on the dial, the last column is what you really drove.


Fitted insteadReads 30Reads 50Reads 70Real miles per 10,000 shown
195/55R1630.0 mph50.0 mph69.9 mph9,992
235/45R1629.8 mph49.7 mph69.6 mph9,944
205/50R1629.5 mph49.2 mph68.9 mph9,839
225/50R1630.5 mph50.8 mph71.1 mph10,161
205/55R1630.5 mph50.8 mph71.2 mph10,169