Hi. As you can tell from my post count, I'm new to the forum. Hopefully someone on here may shed some light on the issue that I have. Okay, here's the breakdown. I own a 2005 Civic value package coupe. Recently, I got bored of the tiny standard 14 inch wheel/hub cap combo so I decided to get the OEM 15 inch alloy wheel that are usually fitted to the higher model EX Civics. So here is my question. A coworker of mine told me by changing from a 14 inch wheel to a 15 inch wheel, I would have inaccurate speedometer readings. Also, he said that I might "mess up" the gearing on my vehicle because my car was designed for the 14 inch wheeel. Is this all true? He told me I can avoid this by using a lower profile tire that would come out to be the same diameter as the tire I had on the 14 inch wheel. However, I don't want to get low profile tires as they don't have as much to give in terms of tolerance to pot holes and in turn may bend up the wheel if I hit a big enough one. So what can I do? I'm sure others have ran into this problem before so there must be a fix to it if what my coworker tells me is true. Thanks for any help that I may get. I appreciate it.

 

You need low profile tires anyway because standard 15's will be too large to fit inside the fenders. The online tire stores have a calculator to show which tire combinations are the same outer size. You won't "mess up your gears" using different sized tires, the only real consequence is that the speedometer and odometer will be wrong.

 

I'm pretty sure the wheel well on the value package car I have is the same size on the higher models civics that use the 15 inch wheel I bought so the fenders should accommodate the bigger wheel just fine. Also, isn't there any way to have the speedometer recalibrated?

 

There are ways to have your speedometer re calibrated. Going up to a 15 running a slightly lower profile tire, you may be off 2 or 3 mph at 60... really not a big deal. And no it wont mess up your gears.... maybe he meant gearing. Which it would throw that off a bit but not noticeably unless you were gonna put some 18s or 20s.... which we all know would be dumb, and since youre going 15 inch I give you a thumbs up.

 

Well, he isn't correct too much. You won't mess your car up.


I am running 195/60/15s and my car is working perfectly fine.