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Hey guys,

I have been searching for the right wheels for my 03 EX. I was originally going to go with some sweet 18's that I found, but after reading several posts and my own threads have backed off. Now I'm looking at tricked honda's civics specifically and have found several tricked out civics and they have all had 17's and mostly 18's on them.

I have heard from here that anything bigger than 16's affect the ride, handling and braking big time. Not all of these rides are just show and did not find any that have less than 17's.

Can someone tell me what the deal is?

THis car is street cruising only. Automatic, so not racing, though might swap engine later. so for regular street driving whats the real deal? 16,17,18's

 
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16's or 17's IMO. You can fit up to 19's on our civic but IMO it just looks retarded when you go that big and the ride gets worse since the tires will be really low profile like 35. 17's are ideal.

 
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DITTO...

 
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I've been rolling on 17's since Jan '05 and haven't had any noticeable problems with handling or braking performance or ride quality..
Then again, with my suspension mods, it feels hella different than stock..

215/45-17 tires will get you closest to OEM diameter (bigger than OEM by about .1")

 
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so i'm thinking 16's. what is the real difference between the 16's and 17's is it how much tire shows or is it wheel clearance? with 16's you can drop it cleaner cause you have more room to drop?

 
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the main difference is you'll have a smaller sidewall with 17s...

 
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16s or 17s are good.

 
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so has nothing to do with height or clearance. What is more sexy; less tire and more rim or less rim and more tire? that sounds like a stupid question, but i'm not shy.

im looking at Enkei FD-05 16 X 7 machined/gun metal on either silver or black car. can't decide

opinions?

 
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I've had 17s for 3 years now and I think they fit the car the best compared to 16s and 18s. Remember that brake effectiveness drops as the wheel weight increases over stock, not necessarily the size. Those wheels work much better than the Lexani ones you were looking at before.

 
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lol.. my 17" buddy clubs are lighter than those stock 15" steelies..

 
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Eh... not really.. With a smaller sidewall, you're gonna have a slightly rougher ride due to the fact that the sidewall is gonna be a bit stiffer..

But seeing as how we're dealing with ~.5" difference in sidewall height, it's fairly negligible.. (assuming a 16" rim would have a 215/50-16 tire and the 17" rim would have a 215/45-17 tire)

I use those specific tire sizes because that's the respective tire sizes that'll give you the closest diameter to an OEM rim (assuing 185/65-15 for stock) and mess with your speedometer the least (215/45-17 makes your speedometer 0.6% slow, the 215/50-16 doesn't mess with your speedometer)


In the case you don't know how to read the tire sizes, 215 is the tire width in mm, the /XX number is the height of the sidewall, as a percentage of the width, then followed by a -XX, which is the rim diameter.. Not trying to be condescending, just sharing useful knowledge

 
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not condesending at all. whats the R, Z, ZR for? So for those wheels, the Enkei FD-05's, what tire would u suggest? not size, brand. I'm in FL, so I'm concerned with ride as well as traction in the rain and wear in the heat n humidity.

 
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i have 17s on my civic check out my pics 17s ride rough with a lowerd car even if you have a beefed up suspesion brakeing you can tell a big difference then the stock wheels just remeber if you lower it and put in a faster engine you are going to have to upgrade to bigger brakes even with 17s or even 15s for that matter

 
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how heavy are the stock 15's

 
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I have 17" speedy wheels lite-5's and they weigh 15 pounds. You could probably google how much the stock steelies are but my new ***** are waaaaay lighter.

 
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I believe my stock SI's weigh about 17-18lbs.

 
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I think the stock 15" steelies are something like 20 pounds or so. I weighed my 17" buddy clubs on a bathroom scale before I mounted the tires and they came out to 17.5 lbs

the R (as in 45R17?) means its a radial tire construction.. That's also followed by a number/letter combo like 91W or something.. the 91 is the load rating and the W is the speed rating.

Here's where I learned about reading tire sizes and whatnot
http://www.discounttire.com/dtcs/inf...VLINT|pc|89129

 
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xRiCeBoYx, thanks for the tire info. +rep

 
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i've been wonderin the same question. i've had my eyes on the Enkei RZ-5 and on tirerack.com it recommends 205/45-17. would a 10mm difference be that bad at all?

 
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I'm sure you'll be fine. My Buddy Club P1 Racing SF's are 17x7 as well, and (technically) the 215 width (8.46") is 1.5" wider than the rim (7"). I've had 215/45-17 Nitto NeoGen's on my rims up until I had to get some all season Yokohama's for a freak winter I had in WA..

 
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So I went with 205x55 R16 Firehawk GT's mainly for wet/dry traction. Should I go to 215X50 16? Is that is meant by a low profile tire? When we brought the car in to have the rims put on, I told them low profile, high proformance with good wet traction.

 
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55's will be fine and give u a better ride.