Don't be soft. I've driven in London for years without scraping sidewalls or rims regularly.
But, no, the only appropriate definition of whether a tyre and rim are a good pairing or not is if the width of the rim is within the acceptable range for the tyre - and that has no bearing whatsoever about the numptiness and incompetence of the driver.
Same section but bigger rim 205/50R17 is just for appearance if compared to 205/55R16. Compared to 195/65R15 it's a decent upgrade.
I think the 97mm sidewall on 215/45 would be noticeable compared to
113mm or 127mm. You want to avoid smaller rolling rad, goes deeper into holes.
225/45R17 is going to cost for replacements. Only 0.08% difference in rolling rad to the common stock 15inch size. If the rims don't have that size tyres on them, whine a bit, get more cash off or have them fit some.
You need at least a 7Jx17" rim, 7.5Jx17" preferable. Both will take 205,
215 and 225 tyres.
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245 and 255 would be stupid and I doubt a showroom Focus would have
8Jx17" or 8.5Jx17" rims to take them.
Bigger rim reduces tyre sidewall but moves the heavy alloy rim outwards. Unless the alloy is a very expensive forging or built up from spinning that increases inertia. The inertia acts like more weight that the engine has to haul around and accelerate and brakes have to stop.
The only production Fords that I think have forged wheels are high spec Mustangs (Shelby).
Caranddriver did some tests on VW with plus sized rims. The lateral grip and most other measures of road holding increased as the wheels got bigger than stock but at excessive plus size reduced. Hit the fuel consumption and acceleration times for all plus sizes. As someone has said the larger wheel may put it in a different taxation class.
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I'm sure others have done similar tests.
The stock 195/65R15 size was good enough for James Bond's DB5.
Just make sure they aren't the OEM "ditchfinder" tyres fitted to MX5 - P6000's.
Tell you one thing, when i had a Vectra company car in the late 90's the brakes failed on the motorway, pretty scary. Got it stopped and the brake came back ok.
Vauxhall couldnt work out what it was, in fact they had the car for ages.
Turned out to be a new tyre that was out of spec caused the ABS computer to go t*ts up on long left hand fast bends causing it to go nuts and resulted in no brakes.
A quick calculator-prod says there's just under 11mm difference between the two sidewalls, so 4mm in overall rim/tyre height, and about 12mm (over 2m) in circumference.
Not necessarily. Changing a car's wheels won't chnage the VED bracket (which stays the same no matter what you do to the car) but the same car supplied with two different sizes of wheels by the manufacturer could be in different VED brackets as low profile tyres in general have slighly higher rolling resistances.
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