how easy is it to find tires for the 2006 mazda 3s? i believe they take P205/55 55 R16 tires.

i ask this b/c my fiancee has a 2001 mazda protege es 2.0 and she has always had a hard time trying to find tires for that car. apparently she had to special order them all the time.

will i have to do the same thing with my 2006 mazda 3s?

thanks in advance!

 

hey, go to www.tirerack.com

go to the upgrade garage, tell it the kind of car you have and you can get tires for it and even try rims on the car without actually having to do it in real life...very cool! the website will ask you some questions about your car usuage to get the right tires for the car and then lets you chose by price and performance which ones you want. then you can either buy them from them or use that info and go somewhere else! hope that helps!

 

The dealer must have convinced her that she had to have that brand of tire specifically.

You should be able to get just about any size tire instantly from tirerack. They seem to have the cheapest prices as well.

 

thanks for the suggestions.

as for the 01 protege es 2.0 tires.....when she bought the car it came with larger front tires than rear tires. it was the front tires that she was having the issues with getting. i talked to my dealer about it and he mentioned something about those tires being metric?? does this sound accurate or a bunch of hooey?

 

It's hooey...Car tires are all metric (unless you're talking about old bias ply tires like you see on 60's stock restorations.)

The front/rear tires should be the same size. The previous owner must have gotten a sweet deal on a pair of tires at some point.

P205/55R16

This means 205mm tread width
55% aspect ratio (the sidewall height is equal to 55% of 205mm)
16 - 16" wheel - all wheels are english, I don't know quite why.

You can go to tirerack.com and go into their tire size comparison tool.

My car originally came with 205/50R17 (well that's the stock 17" size anyway, mine came with 15" wheels/tires), but I'm running 225/45R17. They both end up to be almost the same overall diameter.

The only effect to having a slightly smaller/larger tire than what you currently have would be the speedometer would be off slightly and your overall drive ratio will change slightly (resulting in higher or lower engine rpm's at a given speed)

 

you may also go to your local tire store and use the tirerack online price for a price match. i did that one time and it was much better in case you need to return them for some reason. They should be able to price match tirerack and there is no shipping costs ...just state sales tax.

 

I did the same thing with the Wintersports I purchased. Belle tire matched tireracks price. (turns out it was where they get those tires anyway.)