Is it ok for me to drive with 2 18s (driver side) and 2 OEM wheels (passsenger side) for a day? Will this mess anything up? I think its a dumb ?, but wanted to make sure i dont mess my car up!

 

Run 1 set of rims on the front and the other set of rims on the back. You won't mess up your car as long as you keep both OEMs on the rear or both 18s on the rear.

Don't run different rims on different sides, like an 18 on the passenger side rear and a oem on the drivers side rear. That will mess up your differential. Same reason that when you get a flat tire in the rear you must move a front tire to the rear and put the donut on the front.

Karim

 

Well, what Karim said is basically correct. What you don't want is any significant difference in diameter from one side of the car to the other. There are a few systems that will be affected by such a difference. The differential will overheat and potentially burn out causing a very expensive repair (this is the reason why you are never supposed to run the donut spare on the rear of the car). The ABS system will be confused and potentially malfunction or cause your brakes to not act properly if you have too big a difference in rotational speed from one side to the other caused by different diameter wheel/tire combinations.

That last bit is important. If your 18" temporary rim/tire diameter is essentially the same as the stock 16" rim/tire combination then you shouldn't have any permanent damage from this. Be aware that the tolerances for error are pretty low and that the handling of the car will most certainly be compromised by the different sidewall/contact patch/tread pattern/tire compound combination you will have on it.

The safe answer is, no, don't do it unless you're 100% sure that you haven't introduced too large an error in wheel/tire diameter from one side of the car to the other.

Whew.

 

WERD

 

Dont worry about it Karim. BTW...I will have stock exhaust to give away in a few months if anyone is gonna want it. I think they are 235, need to check. I wanted to just do it for Saturday so that I could get my wheels fixed. Nobody has an extra stock wheel to lend for a day, so I might just put 3 stock wheels and my spare. Now that I think about it, I cant because I have 2 front wheels and 1 back wheel. Cant put my donut on the rear. Maybe I will just wait until next weekend to fix the wheels by leaving the car at the tire shop becuase I have to get my oil changed this weekend too! Sucks, but I guess I have to wait!