My wife's spare tire has a cut in it, and should be replaced. Sears has a sale this week, so I thought I'd get a replacement there, but the tread on the spare will not match the tread on the other tires. If this was the full-time tire the tread mismatch would cause handling problems, but since this is the spare, and would be used only once in a while for just a few miles, is that a problem? An acceptable risk?

Thanks!

 

It's not even really a problem to have mismatched tread designs on all the time provided the tire SIZES are the same. You could even just buy a good used tire to replace the spare.

 

...but my wife wasn't comfortable with the idea. She was remembering the massive SUV tire recall from 2000 or so, and how recalled tires were blackmarketed back into the retail system, sold as used, etc.

Thanks for the info, Tow_Guy!

Dave O

 

you're only buying one tire so just get the exact same tire your car has right now then later you just buy 3 more to complete the set and use one of the older ones as a spare...

 

Sears wouldn't be selling the recalled tires, so she shouldn't have an issue. Just make sure the tire is the same size and it won't be an issue for just a few miles as a spare. Honestly, for casual driving, as long as the tire is the same size, she would probably barely notice anything at all, even if it was a regular tire and not a spare.

Look, most cars these days come with space savers. That isn't even the same size.

The SUV tires that were recalled were Bridgestone/Firestone ATX, ATXII and the Wilderness brands. More recently cheap chinese made tires were also recalled, but once again Sears wouldn't carry those.

 

Thought about it more after I posted, and realized the donut tires are way off from full size. Thanks for your time and posts!

 

If you plan on doing proper tire rotations, you should have all the tires match.

 

He was asking about a spare. To do a proper tire rotation, you don't use your spare.

 

yup but you never said what kind of vehicle, guess we all assumed it was an suv or truck, their spare tire matches the ones on the road...donuts are used on passenger cars only

 

Negative on that. My Porsche Cayenne S has a donut. Granted it is a larger diameter donut, it is still a donut.

 

Hard to tell on cars anymore; some larger cars still have donuts and some smaller ones have full size spares. Wife's Camry has a full-size.