Deviating Tire Dimensions

[aslam]

Hi there,

It's time for me to replace the OEM tires on my MS. Because I live in Canada (Vancouver), I've been looking at getting All Weather (not All Season) tires as they are a nice hybrid between winter and all season tires. Plus my local insurer willnto cover winter accidents if I don't have the 3 peak mountain snowflake.

The problem I'm facing is that the OEM tires are 245/45 R19 and there is a very limited selection of All-Weather tires in that size. One of the local tire shops (Fountain Tire) has said they can find for me a good set of Goodyear WeatherReady All-Weather tires in 235/50 R19. They said that this will result in the new tires being a 14mm difference from the old ones (7mm on the bottom and 7mm closer to the suspension). Also note that I have an active suspension which I do use since I need to be at my very high ride height to get up my driveway without rubbing. I'm wondering if that height difference is going to pose a problem or not. Tesla doesn't seem to have any publicly available info that I can find, so I'm turning to the TMC hive mind to help me.

Any advice, folks? Will putting a 235/50 tire cause problems? Will it rub against the suspension?

Thanks!

 

[PWlakewood]

Www.tirerack.com

 

[aslam]

@PWlakewood: Thanks for the link. Yes I've looked at tirerack.com but even that site only has one all-weather tire in the 245/45 R19 which is a tire that doesn't seem to be well known. And because I'm in Canada, their road hazard warranty is not applicable (I called and confirmed this with them). So once you calculate the USD-CAD exchange rate, the shipping cost they add to the order ($146 to ship to Canada) and the duties I'll pay once they cross the border, it doesn't end up much cheaper to buy the tires from them and get them installed locally. Also, I've found the local shops really don't seem to like installing tires that you bought online. Some of them plain out refused to do the job because they said it wasn't worth their time since the real profit margin was on the sale of the tire itself. Others were going to charge me almost $150+ to do the job, which again weighs negatively on the economic model of buying online and installing locally.

That's why I'm looking into buying a different sized tire and hence the reason for this thread to ask if that is asking for trouble or if it is no big deal.

 

[PWlakewood]

Interesting....good luck with your search.

 

[rooter]

 

[serendipitous]

You should be fine. Your speedometer will read a little lower relative to your actual speed than before, but they tend to be conservative anyway so it'll probably end up close to dead on.

You may want to consider a set of true winter tires and a cheap set of wheels instead though. Plenty of good performance winter tires in the OEM size. I ran Continental Viking Contact 8s this past winter, then bought a set of 21" wheels with summer tires. You can often pick up someone's 19" slipstream or probably the new tempest wheels for less than the cost of a few seasonal tire swaps and balances.

 

[Doanster1]

Nokian WRG4 comes in the stock 245 size and it looks like Kal Tire is your local distributor. I have the Hakkas (full winter) on a second set of wheels.