I am new to the madza world as I bought a 2007 madza3 this past Sat. 8-16-08 with 11,832 miles on it. It's the s touring with origional Goodyear 205/50-17 Eagle RS-A.
After these tires wear out what would fit that not a low profile and would it require a wheel change. Any info would be helpful.

 

First, if the car has only 12K miles on it, you should have a long time to make the decision.

What don't you like about the current tire size?

Tell us about your driving. Mostly highway, mostly city, or 50/50? Driving for performance, or for economy? Are the current Goodyears doing the job for you?

You have 17 inch rims, so you have to buy 17 inch tires, unless you want to buy new rims.

 

Everything that will fit on the 17 inch wheel and fit under the car will be a low profile tire.

 

This car is complete new to me as any small car is, because in the last 21 years i have only driven pick-ups. My driving style is consertive and easy. Drive appx 30% city and 70% country roads here in central Texas. With 12,200 miles om my tires now what kind of millage can i expect. At $200.00 a tire i need to get arleast 50,000 out of these.

 

First of all, the Bad Year's are over-priced crap, so I wouldn't replace them w/same any way. After 3 cars/three sets of Good Year's and 3 bad experiences w/them, it'll be a cold day in hell when I give them my money again.
I got <20K on mine before they were @ the wear indicators and could not have been happier to have to replace them. Skipping uncontrollably sideways in the rain was normal for them. I HATED them. GY wanted $293 ea. + mounting and balancing when my went bad. I laughed in their faces.

 

i order my tires from www.discounttire.com and take them to the local tire kingdom for mount and balance 10$ a tire. i paid 80$ a piece for my hankook(i would have put on bfgoodrich but money was tight)tires and with the way i drive which is really hard i got about 10,000 miles on them. most low profile tires are only 12000 to18000 mile tires maybe even way less.

I like the factor 17s on the mazda they look sick. I wouldnt ever get rid of them.

oh i agree with virgin1 goodyear tires are garbage and extremely overpiced AND POOR QUALITY.

and factory tires that come with most of these new cars wear fast because most car manufactures by cheap tires to save a few dollars. I bought a kia with BFgoodrich tires, and i am a fan of bfgoodrich i put them on all my cars. but the tires only lasted the first 8000 miles. I replaced them with another set of bfgoodrich's and got about 40,000 miles out of them.

 

All the info is helpful. Virgin1 what tires do you use or recommend. How about the yoko yk520's. They seem to get pretty good reviews.This monday I'm changing out my cartridage oil filter and installing the adapter for the spin on filter with the oversize filter which then will require 5 qts on an oil change. Will let you know how it all goes this next week. Going to put 5w-20 gtx syntec oil as I am a big beliver in GTX products.

 

I'm not impressed by what I've seen/read about Hankook's. And $80/ea for only 10k on the clock? You could've done better. I do a lot of tire research being on these forums.
I'm currently running 225/45-17" Kumho AXS's.They're pretty nice.There's little Idon't like about them in spirited day-to-day drivingand I expect to get around 20-25k out of them. $90 ea. including mounting and balancing from the Tire Rack, though I also do business w/Discount Tire and if you're careful can get some pretty good deals there too, though they don't mount and balance for free any more. Do your homework and take in your best price (on paper.) They will at least match it.

 

That's the oil I run too. I like it.
For a better ride and price/cost, look into the Kumho's. This is my third set (two of them on my wife's Saturn) and we basically like them. I don't think you can beat them for price and wear in a HP/UHP AStire. The sidewalls are more forgiving than most, some would say soft, and for a UHP tirethey probably are. I would still recommend running a little higher pressure in them though. I run 40F/34R, but I drive my car pretty hard most of the time. I'd say for what you describe, try 34/33, or even 36/33 to start with, but experiment for personal taste and style.
And if you're not worried about AS, go w/the AST's. Either way, you've got a 17x6.5" wide wheel to deal with and an overall tire circumference of approx. 78.76". You could run 215/50's if you wanted to but then you get into speedo error and such. I ran that size in Falken's and wished I had gone to 215/45's instead.

 

Sorry!! That should've beenthe LX Platinum's not the AST's, 600 wear rating and a GT tire instead of an UHP.
Or the KH16's. My wife has those on her Saturn now and likes them...and that ain't easy, believe me. She's picky about her traction. They're a quiet tire too.
http://www.tirerack.com/tires/Compar...p;x=42&y=9