Tires too big for the car?

Question

About 6 months ago we took my daughters '03 Volvo S60 to a national chain and purchased new tires for her. They installed 205/65/R15 tires. Since that time, I have noticed that her tires seem low an awful lot of the time and one of us (usually me) has to inflate them. A month ago she went on a trip and one of the tires blew. She took it to the chain and had it replaced with the same tire. Last week she told me that she was driving to Nashville, and I asked her to go to the local TD and have the tires checked before driving it for 6 hours each way. They said that they found a small hole and patched it, but other than that the tires were OK. On the way home from Nashville, another one of the tires blew! No TD was close so the tow truck took her to a local shop. They told her that TD had installed the wrong tires, and installed one (1) 195/65/R15 to replace the blown tire. Now that I have done a little research, I see that the last gentlemen seems to be correct. OEM is 195/65/R15. But here is my question: would that tire size difference in any way explain the problems that she has been having? Obviously, something is not right, but I cannot figure out what it might be… Now I’m either going to have to change 3 tires that are marginally taller (about .5 inch, I think), or one tire. Which tire shop should I be angry with? Thoughts?

Thanks!

Answer 1

The difference in tire size would not be causing either the leaking, the one tire to need patched, or the blow-outs. The different than stock tire size is just a different tire size. Nothing can be inferred from this other than possibly having a speedometer slightly off during vehicle operation.

I think the bigger question here is why do tires keep blowing? To me, this is the bigger issue and one I'd take up with the national tire chain where you purchased the tires. I don't know the brand name of the tires you purchased, but even the uber cheap tires I'd expect to last longer than six months (unless I was putting 100k miles per year on my car). These tires should not be having issues unless there is something wrong with the car itself (i.e.: bad alignment; worn suspension; etc).

Answer 2

The diameter is unlikely to be the cause of any of the issues unless it was hitting body work, which you would likely notice. The width however could be a problem, if the wheels are too narrow for the larger tires the extra flexing of the sidewalls could cause the air loss and failures.

This is hard to say for sure though without knowing the wheel dimensions.

Personally I would change to match OEM size and go from there.