I like 16 all around on 65-68; others like bigger.
Suggest looking at 16 & 17 pictures.
If you have time check out tires at car show, performance store, mall, etc.
Not a fan of wheel spacers.

 

The tires for 17" are not that bad anymore. I got my fronts for about 71 bucks each. The rears were only 122, for a 275/40. As far as rotating, i dont know anybody that rotates tires anymore.Staggered looks better and why would you wan the same skinny on the front,on the rear???

 

Rotating tires helps avoid high speed vibrations. Learned the hard way.

I know first hand a few performance cars w/ high speed mild vibration isues. Some can't be rotated so only solution is to live w/ mild vibration or keep replacing tires.

Can check tire roundness and uneven wear patterns w/ chalk ball, scratch awl, and drill vise.

 

Yesterday I finally got around to taking the summer tires off of the Mustang and the Subaru. Chalk marked where they came off of so that when the summer tires go back on in the spring they will get rotated. For the Mazda, the autocross tires get rotated after each event (or about every 50 miles if I drive to the events on the auto-X tires, maybe every 3 if I travel on the street tires and swap tires in the pit at the event). The street tires don't get rotated quite as often.


When your driving is "all-around hard", you find out pretty quickly that the heavy end needs wide wheels and tires at least as badly as the rear does.


Norm

 

Correct me if I am mistaken, but I thought that regardless of the type of tire you buy you are never supposed to rotate left to right (unless you actually took the tire of the wheels so that the direction the tire itself is spinning is the same). My understanding is that the belts set in place inside the tire according to which direction force is being applied to them. I thought that ignoring this could potentially cause premature belt failure=disaster.

 

I've always heard not to cross rotate steel belted tires.
I used to cross rotate performance steel belted tires w/ no ill effects.
Now days I err on caution and only rotate front to rear.
Softer suspensions mask tire vibrations.

 

i prefer my 17s. not too big as others have stated, imo of course. your car tho, the opinions of others should be irrelevant.

 

Now if someone would post a nice pic of 16 for comparison...anyone?

 

While that does look nice, I still think that 17s look a little too big. I think 16s look fine, but I really prefer 15s.

 

i second that