Does anybody know of any potential problems? My thoughts is that my car would sit lower and have better grip, both of which would be awesome for autocross. Not sure how on target this is though.

 

I don't think you will find to many, if ANY tire maker that would recommend putting a tire that size on a 6 inch wide rim....which is what our stock rims are. for a 205....I think you will find that a 7 inch rim is the minimum that is recommended.

 

They probably will fit, but because sidewall height is so small they will look "sqeezed"-this is ghetto.
205/45/50 and 205/50/16 fit fine.
Alex

 

remember if you get tires this size you will need a monster truck suspension to go along with them.

 

I'm not sure what type of autocrossing you want to do, but none of the good brands of race tires are available in 205/40R16. If you are running Stock class, you can get 205/45 Kumho V700's or 215/40 Hoosiers, both of which should fit on the wheels. However, if you're running in Street Touring or Street Prepared, you need wider wheels, period. The stock 6" wide wheels are too narrow.

What kind of tires are you thinking about getting, and what class do you want to compete in?

 

I'd go with 205/45/16's rather than 40 series tires. 40 series will have a much shorter sidewall and I think would look too pimp, not to mention leaving lots of fender gap.

As far as 205's on a 6 inch wide wheel, I have 205/50/15's on the front of my MR2 on the stock 6 inch wheel. No problems, they do come out from the rim lip a bit but I think it looks ok.

When the time comes to replace the dunlops on my Protege I might go for the 205/45's.

 

I once saw a 98 Acura Integra Type R, with stock 15"x6" rims and 225/50/15 tires.

 

I haven't actually started autocrossing yet (and I guess it shows).

I was under the impression that the shorter the side wall, the wider the resulting contact patch. which should be good for grip in racing, right? guess not.

thanks for the help -- any other suggestions?

Maybe you guys have some ideas for a tire and suspension setup that would work well for daily driving and weekend autocrossing?

keep in mind I'd like to stick with the stock rims (for now at least)

 

Shorter sidewall-less sidewall flex. It also changes shape of contact patch, not really size.
But be very careful with selection-there's lots of "low profile"
tires on the market which are made of "all season compound" and their grip is mediocre. So it's possible to run into 40 series tire which will grip worse than 60 series...Or 225 which will grip worse than 195.
There's closeout on Yokohoma A520 at Tirerack(about $80/piece for 205-45-16) anf that's a great tire to start. I bet someone can recommend anything else.

Alex

 

IMHO you should run a few autocrosses before you change anything on the car, including the tires. You need to learn some basic car control and get an idea of what class you intend to run in before you start messing with car setup. I also discourage you from buying fancy tires until you've been driving long enough to take advantage of them.

What tire you use is highly dependent on what class you're running in. As someone else already pointed out, the TYPE of tire is far more important than the size. A car with 185/60R13 Hoosier R3SO3 road race tires will spank an identical car on 205/40R17 Nitto NT450's.

 

Thanks, but were already on the same page here. The purpose of this thread is to entertain a thought/question I had while dreaming of future mods. My car's only 3.5 weeks old now and I plan on getting a bit more use out of the stock tires before replacing them, and in the meantime I will be autocrossing my car in stock condition (except for the tint ).

My last car was a Honda Del Sol and surprisingly my p5 handles just as good if not better than the stock Sol but Ive still got a lot of adjusting to do. (mainly shift points and finding a way not to slide around on my leather seat through tight turns )

Anyways thanks again guys