just swapped my wheels over on my bugeye i did have the bugeye gold sti wheels...........i nowe have inotive 17s in gold but the tyres seem smaller and its looks a tad stupid (loads of room between arches and tyre......) they are 215s.........could i of been on bigger tyres before they seemed alot more chunky any ideas????????????? i didnt check last tyre size before i let them go!!!!!

 

maybe i had 225 or 235 before .......any suggestions as buying new tyres this week

 

IIRC, the bugeye runs 225/45 17?

Check on here.

Camskill doing a good deal on Vredestein at the mo.

 

Your larger number is the width of the tyre, you should be looking at the profile size. I guess you have 35/40 now and had 45 before.

 

Profile is a percentage of the overall width.
Increase the width and you increase the profile.

 

225/45/17 or 235/45/17 as long as they are 7.5+ width

 

Oem on the WRX is 215/45/17 on 7.0" rims while the STI came with 225/45/17 on 7.5" rims. Out of the box they definitely look undertyred. You can run 225/45/17 on the standard rims no problem.

 

yep just found out i was running on 235/45/17s and it was a much more comfy ride seem to be feeling every bump on the 215s also looks a bit empty around arch and under tyred looks like a visit to local tyre garage

 

looks like my inovit redline wheels are 17x7 and my old wheels was 17x7.5 will they still look undertyred with 225/45/17 on them will i notice the differnce between 225s and 215s also will it the handling decrease??

 

17x7 is a bit small for a newage tbh, more suited to a classic IMHO but 225/45/17 would be a better decision than 215

 

i dont think the wheel will take a 225 mate isnt that the width?? at moment its sitting on 215/45/17 ........i thought 215 was width of wheel, 45 is tyre wall height and 17 the rim !! what i need to do is increase thew wall to make look bigger...but holf d on ive just looked and my last wheels was 45 tyre wall too so it shouldnt look any different ...............only thing thats changed is the width of the wheel which u cant notice from a side view at least !!! can you??? am i right? lol

 

The 45 is the aspect ratio which is a function of the width, so a 225/45 will be taller than a 215/45 (the 215 or 225 being the tread width). Plenty of cars run 225/45/17 as OEM on a 7" wheel so you'll not have a problem doing that on the WRX rims if you so wish.

 

are the standard bug wheels not 17 x 7.5s then mate i have iovit redlines and they are 17x 7 wheels are you saying i can fit 225/45/17 tyres to my 17x7 alloys mate???

 

Standard newage WRX wheels are 17 x 7.0" with 215/45 tyres, it's only the STI wheels which are 7.5" with the 225/45 tyres as standard. Some people advise against fitting 225's to 7.0" rims but given how many OEM manufacturers have that as standard spec it really isn't a problem. My old Octavia vRS was 205/50/17 and a common change was to fit 225/45 to the OEM 7.0" rim. You really have nothing to worry about; my winters sat there are 225/45 too.

 

My vRS runs 225/45 on 17x7

 

Yeah, same here. Once I killed the originals off I went to 225/45 and never looked back in 100k+ miles of driving, including the winter tyres I was running.

 

so basically thats what im going to do go for 225s and in you opinion will they look better than the 215s??????????? fill the gap left by old wheels a bit better etc???? i dont really want to lower it really???

 

@ST-X Really enjoying my vRS after 6months of ownership purely for commuting Does 45mpg on a careful run and cruise control works pretty well Show it some country lanes and it goes really well and would probably surprise a few people You can park it anywhere and nobody hates you, it rides comfy and the boot is huge Perfect car tbh

 

@53, yours must be the diesel, mine wouldn't ever do that being the older 1.8T! Good cars though, mine took all manner of abuse over five years and was pretty cheap to run. It wasn't as much fun as the scoob is, but bang for buck it's a good 'un.

@Kezwaldo, they'll definitely fill out better. The change won't be huge in dimensional terms but the effect of filling the arches out will be proportionately more as it's a small gap to start with. You need only look at pics of the OEM STI's for an impression of how the difference should look (discounting the difference in wheel design of course).

 

No it's a Mk1 1.8T petrol I drive for a living and have done loads of Eco driving courses Only downside is the traction control which can be a pain .... so it's turned off. Yeah never going to be as much fun as my Classic or S202 but it's a great all rounder

 

If they are 45's then the difference in 'thickness' will be 4.5mm ie 45% of the increase in tyre width (225 - 215). However, that's all round, so in reality the height of the tyre will increase by 9mm. In other words the gap between the tyre and arch will decrease (you'll fill up the gap) by almost 1cm.