Should work , I did 225, and didn't lower yet

 

Well here goes... I have 16" stock steel wheels at current and want to put some red Wheel Vintique Smoothies on it with white walls. I have talked to a tire store (Pete Paulson, est. 1961) who said that I can (and he has) put 235/70 whitewalls on a 16" wheel on a HHR. I used a wheel calculator and it said that conversion would make my spedometer reading 14.4% too slow or read 60 when going 68mph! In addition, my car has been lowered with Goldline springs (1.75 in the front and 2" in the rear). My question is, has anyone ran a 235/70 tire on a 16" or even better on a lowered one? Anyone see any problems with this configuration. Thanks for all your help and any advice!!!

 

I have 225-45-18's on my HHR. That is the tallest tire you can get with out it hitting on the bottom of the Strut on the front.
I did a check on one of the tires size calculator sites and it says the 235-70-16 is an unrecognised size and it is about 1.75 taller so there is no way it would fit even if you could find that size.

 

I put in the wrong size on there. (garbage in-garbage out) The tallest tire you can get on the front is 26" tall, the 235-70-16 is 28" tall.

 

Curly, thanks for the help. You mentioned that 26" is the tallest you can go... that was based on the car being lowered already right?
If so and I were to go back to the stock springs I should be able to go taller with the tire right? Does anyone know the tallest side wall height you can get with a 215/?/16 set up if the car is stock. I'm trying to acheive the tallest side wall height as possible to get more whitewall. Does anyone know if I could I go with a 215/65/16? Thanks again to all.

 

Lowering doesn't affect strut clearence, thats a fixed dimension...just measure the inside of your rim up to the bottom of the strut spring seat..that'll tell you how tall you can go, only way to get past that is with wheel offset and you can't do that without hitting the inside of the fenders....

 

IGOTAWOODY got it right. Lowering has nothing to do with the tire hitting the strut. 26 is the tallest you can co up front with out hitting the strut. My car has been lowered and there is no problems with body clearance.

 

even with a 6in wide rim and tire to match the width of the rim? 26 in max?

 

You can't change the distance from the balljoint to the bottom of the strut by raising or lowering..its fixed, all you do by lowering is change the distance from the lower spring pad to the upper strut mount.....unless..( and this may be an interesting mod) you can go with a longer LOWER strut that raises the lower spring perch up higher and use a shorter spring..hmmm..pretty much like a bagged unit.OR go with a narrow coil over unit, that may or may not give you the extra room you are looking for.

 

I have an 06 2LT with the stock chrome 17" wheels with the 215/50/17. I can get a deal on a set of 245/45/17. The size looks close to the stock size according to the calculator. Any opinions is this size will work. Thanks, Mark