Believe it or not more people search for “tire size calculator” on the internet than say “buy tires” or “best tires”. We are guessing that when people do this they are probably a little surprised and confused about what they find.
Intuitively, we think that many people looking for a tire size calculator actually want to figure out what size tire a certain make/model vehicle requires. What this search returns is something completely different.
Sample Tire Size Calculator
Take for example the popular tire size calculator provided by Discount Tire (link provided below).
==> Tire Size Calculator <==
If we take say a Honda Civic, the most common fitment is 195/65-15. Plugging this into the tire size calculator we see that when the speedometer reads 65mph the car is actually going 65mph. Makes sense right?
Well, what if we decide to customize the tires we put on our Honda Civic, say we want to install a “plus one” fitment of 205/55-16. If we plug this into the calculator we now see that when the speedometer reads 65mph the car is actually only going 64.73mph.
So what does this mean?
So, a tire size calculator is how the automotive industry determines what effect custom tire sizing has on the actual speed of a vehicle versus the speed registering on the speedometer.
Basically if the overall diameter of the custom size tire is less than the standard size tire then the speedometer will overstate the vehicle’s actual speed.
For some additional information on plus sizing please refer to this post: How To Buy Tires Online Like A Pro
Was this what you were looking for?
If your search for a tire size calculator did not return the information you were looking for you’ll be happy to know that by visiting the link below and simply inputting the make and model of your vehicle you can determine what size tires you should buy: