Rolling on "Rubberbands"

Looks nice with it lowered, too. Reminds me of a concept sketch. But you forgot to apply tire dressing to make the tires nice and black!

 

Very, very nice.

 

How rough is the ride now? I'm curious

 

now i don't feel like i am the only one with a black prius with little scratches and
marks over it

how much did you spend? what is the bolt pattern for prius? curious.

tint your windows

i kind of like armor all tire foam, you just spray it on and leave it alone, no rubbing.
$5 for a can

might discolor driveways so you want to move the car and then rinse it off the driveway

 

Bolt pattern for Prius is 5x100
I like the wheels, please add some valve stem caps, Black.
I am just worried that with such a low profile tire you are going to bend rims or blow out tires. Be careful for pot holes, etc. I do like the look.

 

I'm surprised but I think it looks good too. I don't normally care for the lowered look on rubber bands and huge rims, but it seems to work with the Prius, oddly enough. Probably lowering your car helps to make up for some of the lost mpgs a little bit too.

After reading that a 205 15" tire that's 5 lbs heavier than stock can decrease mpgs by 5 miles, looks like you're losing about the same amount of mpgs with much larger wheels that also increase the weight by the same amount. Guess that's a no-brainer, but it's nice it can be done without too much sacrifice in mileage.

 

only thing is the mpg isn't accurate because you changed the over all diameter of the rim. neither is your miles per hour on your speedometer.

looks sick though!

 

That's not necessarily true. When you install a larger rim, you are also supposed to couple it with a lower-profile tire so that the overall diameter of the wheel is the same. That's why the tires are "rubber bands" -- in order to keep the same size wheel/tire combo. That being said, sometimes it ends up not being exactly the same, and in that case, you're right, it does impact the mpgs and mph to some extent.

 

i owned a rim and tire shop for 5 years which i sold last year. now i don't know everything about them i know a good amount more than most.

if you do your proper homework what you said can be true...

the factory prius tires are 185/65/15. which gives the overall height of 24.47".

now the only way to achieve the exact accurate speedometer is to get that exact factory height.

i just put some 18" wheels and tires on my wifes new prius and i made sure i achieved exactly that.

i went with a 205/40/18 nitto tire which gave me an overall height of 24.46"

by doing that i kept the speedometer in tact and kept a accurate gauge on my miles per gallon.


NOW THAT BEING SAID...

the original poster prius70 went with a 215/35/19 which has an overall height of 25.01" which is about a 1/2" in difference in height. now a half inch isn't going to much, but it will make more of a difference than you think. probably about 3 miles difference on the speedometer when your traveling at 60 mph. it adds up over a full tank of gas.

but prius70 did a great job getting a tire that is real close to the stock size...

for example, on my cadillac cts i went from a 225/55/16 (25.74" height) to a 245/30/22 (27.9" height) a difference of about 2.25". my speedometer was saying 60 mph when i was actually going 70-71 mph.

so even though i went with rubberbands for tires the overall height was way more than the overall stock height so it still made a huge difference in the mpg/mph.

(i still have my tire size calculator program)

 

Not to mention, it's probably more difficult to retain the same height the more you step up in wheel size. Going from 15 to 16 or 17 isn't quite like jumping to 18s and 19s and then trying to find a rubber band to retain the same diameter.

 

you got it...

 

heres what you can do to tell how fast you are going...

i have a portable garmin mostly for trips for rental cars. but either way it has a mph reading. they are 100% accurate. if i'm going 78mph in a rental car the portable garmin will read 78 mph. thats usually the easiest way and you can always find someone who has one...

 

Your new wheels/tires will read about 2% lower than the stock wheel/tire setup. Really, close, actually.

If you want to see how far it's really off, try to find some mile markers on the highway. If you can find 5 miles worth, reset or note the odometer at the start and end and you can get a good idea of how close you are. You should only be off by a tenth or two of a mile depending on how close the stock calibration was.

Probably need 10 miles worth of mile markers to get a really good idea, or like mrplease suggested, a GPS device.

 

Wouldn't the tire width, if wider than stock also contribute to rolling resistance and decrease mpg?
However, I am all for the better looks over sacrificing a few miles !