Topic: Winter tires too large?

[Craig]

August is the end of the road for my parent's leased 2003 Expedition.  After a scare during the first snowfall of this past season, he bought a set of Nokian Hakka SUV winter tires, and had them mounted on the stock aluminum rims.  Size of OEM and these winter tires is 265/70R17.

They were prepared to buy out the lease, but the Ford set buyout is a little too much at $29K.  The black book is $22,800 to $25,950 for 60,000km.  The will not entertain offers, even though Ford probably won't get $25K at auction.

So that leaves them with a set of 265/70R17 winter tires.

Personally, I hope they go for a slightly smaller SUV.  My parents main criteria?  They want to be able to use their snow tires.  lol

My dad likes the Pathfinder.  The LE comes with 265/65R17 tires.  Using an online tire calculator, his Nokians have a 1" larger diameter, and the resulting spedometer reading will be off by 3.4%.

Is this acceptable?

[HeliDriver]

Our XTerra came stock with 265/70R15s. For the past 5 winters, we've had 31x10.50R15 winter tires on it. They're about 1 1/4" bigger (4.4%), and we've never had any problems.

In fact, lots of folks in the more hardcore 4x4 crowd run 33" tires & bigger without any serious issues (definitely issues, though. But it can be done).

Are there any Pathfinder forums on the net? I'd poke around there & see what others have done.


(Message edited by sir_civic on June 05, 2005)

[morty]

The larger diameter may not matter, but it may....Sounds confusing, I know. They may fit in the wheel well, but the computer may not like them. You will need to consult with your Nissan dealer to make sure they can reset the computer to accomodate the larger tires. You would also want to do a trial fit to be sure the tires clear all components and body parts.





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[Craig]

Does the computer care?  or are you saying we could have the spedometer recalibrated for the larger tires?

As the Pathfinder has good clearance around the tires, I seriously doubt a 1/2" increase in radius is going to affect anything, but we'll take a better look at the Pathfinder sometime soon.

[morty]

Computer could care. ABS is oftne calibrated to the revolutions of the tire. If the revolutions are decreased because of a larger tire...you could get the annoying dash light.



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