I recently put new tires on my stock 17's. At first, I was only going to replace the rears, until the following week, but we ran into a problem.

The tires were changed from the stock 215/55/17 to a 225/45/17. The new tires were slightly smaller in diameter than stock, should be no big deal, WRONG!

The car (Read VDC, or traction control) thought the rear tires were going faster than the front (slipping), so it was cutting power at 20-30 MPH and higher. So we rotate them to the front.

This fixed the VDC issue, but then the ABS thought the fronts were going faster than the rear when slowing down (slipping), so the ABS was trying to modulate the brakes.

So we ended up replacing all four tires with 225/45/17's. All problems gone.

But the question is this, how does everyone with different sized tires deal with this problem. A 245/40/19 and a 275/35/19 are not exactly the same size, close but not the same.

Has this happened to anyone else.

This was happening in a straight line, not turns.

Turning off the VDC did not help.

Any ideas?

 

you have a sedan... the people staggering are usually coupes... im not an expert but i think this is what youre talking about.

 

Yes, sedan, but I should still be able to stagger if I want...right?

How do I fix the size problem?

 

The 215s and 225s are 1.3" different. What did you expect? That's way too big.