I am buying new 16" wheels for my 82 Mondial. It now has the same size all around, but the new Mondial wheels are 8jx16 rear and 7jx16 front. The specs for the Mondials with 16" wheels is 205/55vr 16 front and 225/55vr16 rear. That comes out as almost the same exact overall diameter for the rear as my current metric wheels and tires. For the front though, it seems very small. I am concerned it won't fill the wheel well. Questions: Can the same tire as rear be put on front (smaller) wheel? Would it look akward? Thanks Sam
Hi Sam, Yes, the wheels are 7" in the front and 8" in the rear. The stock sizes are 205/55-16 front and 225/50-16 rear. It's odd, because the stock wheel size on my GT4 was 7.5" all around. Why did they go to a slimmer front wheel in the later models? If you order tires from tirerack, the website lets you choose your tires based on model. Since I upgraded to 328 wheels (should be similar for the mondial), I picked 1986 328, and it came up with tire sets for me in the correct stock size. Dom
It's the same with 308s as well. Standard was 7.5'W all around, but when wider rears were introduced they went to 7" front 8" rears.
Sam, With the sizes you mention, it would make the front tire diameter 24.8" and the rear 25.8". Keep in mind that my car has ABS so it is a little different. But I guess you worked out the spacer issue already....
Sam if your car came with metric tires like mine did (the 240 metric) for your rears 222/55 or 245/50 are the same diameter as the metric 240's fronts i'll go with 215/55 same diameter as the rear but narrower 205/55 on early mondials are to small your wheel gap will be 6-7 inches from the fender.
By the way, you can check out this site to give you info like diameter, circumference, sidewall, etc. for different size wheel and tire combos : http://www.miata.net/garage/tirecalc.html Dom
That gap issue is what I was concerend about. I checked with Tire Rack. They said 225/55 16's would fit on all the wheels. I think that might work for my car; 225's all around, which keeps in character for that year Mondial. Ed, I had heard that the 16's were straight bolt on. Hope that's true.
