Keep in mind I don't wanna hear the speedo issue or the "VDC" going crazy. All i want to know if there is any type of safety issue when putting a 265/35/19 tire on a OEM 8.5 wheel. The car will see track time and a lot of hard cornering.

Anyone?

Its outside of the safe wheel width for an 8.5" wheel since its ~10.5" wide. Whether or not it will actually fail during hard corning is unlikely, but also not well tested since its not recommend by any manufacturer. At the very least its going to feel squirmy since its so wide and the tire bulges too much on that narrow wheel. 255/35/19 or 255/40/19 would be a better choice IMO

I agree with that assesment. It's just a bit too wide and will create a bulging profile on the contact patch. I would not recomend it for track use. Steet maybe.

Go here and plug in the sizes, you'll see why.

http://www.wheelsmaster.com/rt_specs.jsp

Well right now this is how it looks like with 255/30/19. Will 10mm really make it look like a bulge?

the 30 series will decrease the bulge somewhat because of the shorter stiffer sidewall, the 265/35/19 will bulge more. Depends on the particular tire also, variations of up to .5" for a particular tire width is not uncommon

Thanks guys. It is still a toss up between the two. I want to go with 265 for the fat look from behind since the car is low and the tire sits right at the fender. The tires that im going to with are Toyos, the ones that i have right now. These tires have a round sidwall so 265 is not "really" 265 like the lets say the BF goodrich tires.

I'm in the same boat, except deciding between 245/40/19 or 255/40/19 on an 8.5" rim?

But, I do definitely agree to double check the width, i had 2 different brand tires in the same size at one point, one fit with enough fender clearance, the other didn't.

Vlad, ever consider a stickier tire? I know you're a big T1R fan, but I highly recommend you try some PS2's

I've got 275's on cpe 19's on my sedan and got tons of rub, but I've run them hard for about 2 months without any issues (besides rub) or squirminess. Now I'm trying to find out if a 265/35 will rub in another thread I just started. I don't think the 265 width on that wheel is a problem, but rubbing might be.

Acording to the "tire caculator" I posted, the 245 40 19 will get you closest to the original tire size (sport supension 18" w/235 45 18), your speedo will only be a little off.

Interesting tool you posted Texasscout.....I also did some calculations using ur tool and miata tirecalc and came up with 265/35/19 being the closest match, incidently the same size I am trying to make fit on my sedan.

I think part of the problem in doing these comparison is due to all the differences in sizes between the coupes and sedans Not to mention the differences in the 03-04 vs. 05-06 sedans. If he has an '04 as I do then he got 215/55/17 for stockers vs. the 18's that were offered on the 6mt in the latter 2 yrs. I just find hard to beleive that all our speedo's were corrected differently. So the question is what version/yr of our cars had the best matching tire size for our speedo?

I would like to try them some time but I go through set of tires every single summer with switching them side to side every 6 months. I get the T1Rs with almost 1/2 price of the PS2s.

PS2's are expensive... very expensive

If you're running high-offset wheels, you can try out my rims/tires for a run

what are the specs on ur wheels/tires?
U have PS2s on them?