Winter Wheels

[121gigawatts]

I'm looking for a set of winter wheels on the cheap. What other models/years have the same 16-17" wheels with the same bolt pattern, width, offset?

 

[Dobrinia]

Ford Focus Electric: 5X108 / 7,0J / ET 50 / dia 63.3.

Same with 2001+ years ford
Ford C-MAX
Ford Edge
Ford Escape
Ford Escort
Ford Focus
Ford Focus C-MAX
Ford Focus Electric
Ford Fusion
Ford Galaxy
Ford Kuga
Ford Mondeo
Ford S-MAX

 

[121gigawatts]

Ford Focus Electric: 5X108 / 7,0J / ET 50 / dia 63.3.

Same with 2001+ years ford
Ford C-MAX
Ford Edge
Ford Escape
Ford Escort
Ford Focus
Ford Focus C-MAX
Ford Focus Electric
Ford Fusion
Ford Galaxy
Ford Kuga
Ford Mondeo
Ford S-MAX

THANK YOU! I gave it a google and found little. Where did you find this info? Much appreciated!

Also, it sounds like a selection of Volvo wheels will work too. I'm sure the list is longer.

Ford (19) -
C-MAX Edge Escape Escort Focus Focus C-MAX Focus Electric Fusion Galaxy Grand C-MAX Kuga Mondeo S-MAX Taurus Taurus SHO Thunderbird Tourneo Connect Transit Connect Windstar

Lincoln (6) -
Continental LS MKC MKX MKZ Mark VIII

Mercury (3) -
Cougar Monterey Sable

Volvo (30) -
140 164 240 260 740 760 780 850 940 960 C30 C70 S40 S60 S60 Cross Country S70 S80 S90 V40 V40 Cross Country V50 V60 V60 Cross Country V70 V90 V90 Cross Country XC40 XC60 XC70 XC90

 

[triangles]

Careful, at least on this side of the pond Escort had 4x100 bolt pattern and focus up to 2012 had 4x108. I have some unknown volvo wheels 5x108, 15" diameter, unknown width (best guess is 6") Offset is slightly different, wheels sit slightly farther out. No appreciable handling difference. If anything I seem to have less torque steer. http://www.wheel-size.com/ is a great reference and they have one of the best tire size calculators I have seen.

 

[121gigawatts]

I might just get a set of Discount Tire wheels, they're selling some cross spokes in 16" (18lbs each) for $81 each with a $50 rebate. The tire options I'm given are: 205/55/16 and 205/60/16. Which size would get me better range?

Anyone know the weight of the OEM 17" wheels? I've found some posts that say 24lbs, and others that say 20lbs.

Thanks!

 

[triangles]

Both of those sizes are smaller than the OEM 225/50R17. The smaller one will cause your speedo to read about 2.3 faster than you are going at 60. The 60 ratio tire would be closest to OE at 0.4 faster at 60. Personally I'd go with the 60 ratio tire or even better a 205/65R16 tire which would cause the speedo to be 1.5 slower at 60 (ie speedo reads 60, you're actually going 61.5). Take all that with a grain of salt though. I have 215/65R15 on mine and it in theory should cause my speedo to read 0.3 slow but in practice using Waze as a speedo check it reads about 2 faster at 60. I never did check how off my OEM tires were to waze so who knows? Maybe it was off about the same from waze with my OE wheels. If it's any cheaper I'd go with 15" wheels and the 215/65R15 tires. I know tire rack says the 15" wheels don't fit but the 15" alloy Volvo wheels on my FFE begs to differ. Also there were gas Focus with 15" steel wheels, all the brake rotor, caliper and suspension parts are the same as the FFE so if it fits the ICE it will fit the FFE.

I don't know what the OE wheels weigh but when I weighed them with the tires they were well over 40 lbs. I don't remember exactly what they were but, I may have posted that in an earlier thread when I was talking about finding alternate wheels/tires.

Edit:
I see tire rack recommends 215/55R16. These are also smaller than OE causing the speedo to read 1.3 high at 60 indicated. If going with a 215 width 16", I'd go with 215/60R16 which is closer to OE causing the speedo to read 0.7 high at 60. I think they might be recommending smaller tires because the ICE focus with 17" wheels is 215/50R17 which is slightly smaller than our FFE OE tires.

 

[121gigawatts]

Both of those sizes are smaller than the OEM 225/50R17. The smaller one will cause your speedo to read about 2.3 faster than you are going at 60. The 60 ratio tire would be closest to OE at 0.4 faster at 60. Personally I'd go with the 60 ratio tire or even better a 205/65R16 tire which would cause the speedo to be 1.5 slower at 60 (ie speedo reads 60, you're actually going 61.5). Take all that with a grain of salt though. I have 215/65R15 on mine and it in theory should cause my speedo to read 0.3 slow but in practice using Waze as a speedo check it reads about 2 faster at 60. I never did check how off my OEM tires were to waze so who knows? Maybe it was off about the same from waze with my OE wheels. If it's any cheaper I'd go with 15" wheels and the 215/65R15 tires. I know tire rack says the 15" wheels don't fit but the 15" alloy Volvo wheels on my FFE begs to differ. Also there were gas Focus with 15" steel wheels, all the brake rotor, caliper and suspension parts are the same as the FFE so if it fits the ICE it will fit the FFE.

I don't know what the OE wheels weigh but when I weighed them with the tires they were well over 40 lbs. I don't remember exactly what they were but, I may have posted that in an earlier thread when I was talking about finding alternate wheels/tires.

Edit:
I see tire rack recommends 215/55R16. These are also smaller than OE causing the speedo to read 1.3 high at 60 indicated. If going with a 215 width 16", I'd go with 215/60R16 which is closer to OE causing the speedo to read 0.7 high at 60. I think they might be recommending smaller tires because the ICE focus with 17" wheels is 215/50R17 which is slightly smaller than our FFE OE tires.

I'm more concerned with how the different sizes effect range. I'm sure the smaller you go, the lighter it is, but would the extra sidewall cause range to go down? Just trying to get the most efficient tire size since I'm not getting LRR.

 

[triangles]

Pretty sure you're robbing Peter to pay Paul here. The smaller the tire the more revolutions it has to make to go a mile. I think that would cancel out any range increase from reduced rotational mass. I don't know if necessarily translates to EVs but for ICE vehicles, a slightly larger tire yields fewer revs/mile and lowers the engine speed. Theoretically increasing fuel economy (range). If it actually does, the benefits are likely negligible and not measurable. With my last ICE car I swapped in a transmission with taller gearing (dropped freeway RPM by about 300. I expected this to net me a couple extra MPG. I took extensive measurements before and after. To my surprise, I couldn't find a statistically significant change in freeway fuel economy. The point being, this was a drastically more significant change than playing with wheel sizes and I was unable to see a change in fuel economy beyond the margins of error of measurement, so I would be shocked (pun intended) if you could measure a difference in range based on using two slightly different tire sizes. I would speculate that air pressure and the rolling resistance of the tire would more greatly affect range than the size of the tire. Due to the properties of rubber, a tire that has good winter traction will be a softer rubber and have higher rolling resistance reducing range. It's really a question of how much range are you willing to sacrifice for winter traction. More range = lower rolling resistance = harder tire = less traction. Less range = high rolling resistance = softer tire = more traction. Most range and most traction is a unicorn that doesn't exist. As Scotty would say, "You cannot change the laws of physics!" An actual winter tire will be heaviest and softest and hurt range the most.

In northern Ohio I don't need winter tires. They salt encrust the roads and clear them fairly quickly so 99% of the time the worst case is just cold wet roads with a little slush. There's probably at most half a dozen days a year when I would have to drive thru snow where a true winter tire would be better. I look for an all season tire that has excellent wet traction and snow traction ratings. Cold wet traction is the most important to me. The problem with summer tires and many supposed "all season" tires is that the rubber gets hard when it gets cold say below 40 and you lose wet traction. Years ago I had Falken Ziex 912 tires. Hands down the best tire I've ever had for sub freezing wet roads. Problems is they were also probably the worst tire I've ever had in the snow. I've also had General Altimax RT that had decent cold wet traction and very surprising snow traction. I had no problem with these going thru snow deeper than my ground clearance. The drawback is that these tires were heavy and seemed to hit my fuel economy a little. I don't remember which Michelin tire it was but it had the best balance of cold wet traction, snow traction, and treadwear. Unfortunately it had the Michelin price tag to go along with it. Falken came out with the ZIEX ZE950 tire to replace the 912s. They were rated very well for wet and snow traction so this is what I decided to go with for my FFE "winter tires." Since it's not fair to compare a tire's performance on very different vehicles I can't really make and direct comparisons to previous tires I've had. The cold wet traction is an order of magnitude better than the OE tire. I've only had 2 snowy days of driving with them but they are also at least an order of magnitude better with snow traction. I'm sure an actual snow tire would be even better but I can actually leave traction control on and be able to go from a stop without taking 10 minutes to get moving. :lol: I would rate the snow traction as good or acceptable. keeping the wheels from spinning is still difficult but that has a lot to do with the FFE design of having only 49% weight on the drive wheels. I will still turn off traction control when I need to pull out into traffic so than I can accelerate quicker but, at least I don't have to turn off traction control when the snow flies like I did with the OE tires. It's hard to get the back end to break loose. When I pull the E-brake the back slides less than half as far as the OE tire would slide. So far I am very please with the winter performance of these tires. This summer I will do some range comparisons with the OE tires. I'm curious how much of a range penalty these tires cause. Oh I almost forgot the Falken tire/ Volvo wheel is 3lbs lighter than the OE wheel/tire so I have 12 lbs. less rotational mass. My OE tires still have about 65-70% tread left.

 

[121gigawatts]

They actually make LRR winter tires now, which is supposed to be that magic mix of both worlds. I watched a video from Michelin, and the tire is soft at low speeds but hardens at high speeds, if I remember correctly. Maybe thats backwards. Their rubber works like cornstarch: soft when you touch is slowly, then it hardens up if you pound it.

So basically I'm trying to decide if I want to buy a cheap set of OEM 17" wheels used on craigslist and a set of LLR winter tires or get a smaller, lighter set of 16" wheels (18lbs) and a 16" version of the same LRR winter tires. I might also check out 15" options if the price is significantly cheaper.

Lots of factors: Weight (16" should be ~6lbs less x4 =24lbs) and the increased sidewall (seems like it would add to rolling resistance), and gearing difference.

I'm looking at Michelin X-Ice Xi3 and Nokian Hakkapeliitta R3, which are both LRR winter tires.

EDIT: Just found a great "all weather" (as opposed to A/S) LRR tire (Nokian WR G4/G3). Tesla owners seem to love them, and this wouldn't require a second set of wheels. These are designed for year-around use.

 

[121gigawatts]

Just got a set of 16" wheels mounted with Michelin X-ICE Xi3's, which are LLR winter tires. My drive back home was budgeted +3 miles when I arrived, which included a heater and some uphill driving. So far grip is better and my range seems to have improved! I need to head to the carwash today, lol.



Got it washed!