Stupid question of the day: Can you carry 4 stock Miata wheels in/on a miata?

So, I'm contemplating trying to go up and fetch a Miata some distance away, and the seller isn't 100% confident that the tires on it will make the 3-hour drive back home- this (besides a blinking airbag light, which I'll have to diagnose later, and non-functional A/C) seems to be the only real issue to worry about with it. As such, I'm contemplating how to deal with it.

Simplest would of course be to get it, take it to a tire shop, and have new tires put on it. But... since I'm largely buying this as a winter beater, I kind of want to put snow/ice tires on the stock rims, so don't really want to put new tires on only to pull them off. So next consideration: pick up a set of wheels with good tires locally and drive up with them, swap them onto the car, and drive back with the stock wheels & tires in the car. I'd be renting a car one-way, so I couldn't use it to

Difficulty: it will have a hard top on it, so no cheating by putting the top down...

Is this possible? Or completely impossible?

If you remove the passenger seat... The answer is yes. Friend of mine does this for each track day.

I know I know, what to do with the seat then.

It depends on which stock tire it is, which wheels, and which Miata.

I could fit four BFG 205/55R14s on OEM daisy 14x5.5s into my 99. One in the trunk, two in the passenger seat (vertically, so that they are sitting next to each other), slide the passenger seat forwards until they're up against the dash and one more between the passenger seat and the roll bar.

However, I could not do the same thing with 205/50R15s on 15x7s. The tires were just enough wider that the one in the trunk didn't fit any more.

Simplest answer is to bring spare wheels+tires with you, put them on the car, then take the OEM wheels to the tire store and have the existing tires dismounted and thrown away. You can definitely fit four bare wheels in the car.

If you let the air out of the one in the trunk you should be able to fit it in there with a little pushing even with larger sizes.

The other three should still fit like codrus said.

If you open trunk you can strap them across the trunk opening with the lid up. I have a picture some where.

Why don't you take it to the tire shop and have your snow/ice tires put on and then drive it home?

Tell him to ship you the stock wheels. Arrive, bolt on your good ones with summer rubber and drive home.

Hmm, can you let all of the air out of the bad tires? If you've fully deflated them, you might be able to find a bit more room.

Assuming there's an auto shop not too far away, having the stock ones dismounted would probably work well. Shipping them would probably be not particularly cheap. I'm loathe to have the tire shop put on the snow tires and drive it home on them both because I can save a fair bit by getting them shipped here and installed from TireRack and I'm also not too keen on driving 3 hours in 90-degree weather on winter-compound rubber. I don't doubt it would make it, but would certainly wear the tires a lot more than necessary right off the bat.

It sounds like I can make it work- now I just have to get everything ELSE lined up- like convincing SWMBO that this whole juggling act of things that have to come together perfectly will be worth it...

I can see the cost thing, but IIRC either this mag or another did a tire test with snow tires in hot weather and there wasn't appreciable extra wear.

pimpm3 wrote: If you open trunk you can strap them across the trunk opening with the lid up. I have a picture some where.

Can confirm that this works. It isn't good, mind you, but it works.

Removing the passenger seat gets three in the driver compartment even with a roll bar. With the seat, you might get two leaving one for the parcel shelf (roof down) and one for the trunk.

When I bought my miata it had the steelies and a set of daisies. I put new tires on the daisies and tossed the steelies. I was able to put 1-2 tires in the trunk and 1-2 in the car. You can pretty much balance one between the seats and get 1-2 on the floor/seat.

RE pimpmp3 my buddy does the trunk thing all the time for going to the track

Not me but the same thing. I am to slow...

I put my extra set on a tire trailer......

With the top down you can strap them behind the seats. There's even convenient holes to hook your strap into on each side.

I picked up a set of wheels in mine about a month ago. 195 50 15. One in trunk, one behind the seats with top up, and two in passenger seat. I brought towels to sit them on.

Stampie

Jaynen wrote: When I bought my miata it had the steelies and a set of daisies. I put new tires on the daisies and tossed the steelies. I was able to put 1-2 tires in the trunk and 1-2 in the car. You can pretty much balance one between the seats and get 1-2 on the floor/seat. RE pimpmp3 my buddy does the trunk thing all the time for going to the track

Yeah, that's about what this one would look like- not sure how well it would do for 3 hours on the highway though!

I do it this way

MattGent wrote: I do it this way

That's what I'd like to do- but I don't think the car has a trailer hitch on it...

Ashyukun wrote:

Jaynen wrote: When I bought my miata it had the steelies and a set of daisies. I put new tires on the daisies and tossed the steelies. I was able to put 1-2 tires in the trunk and 1-2 in the car. You can pretty much balance one between the seats and get 1-2 on the floor/seat. RE pimpmp3 my buddy does the trunk thing all the time for going to the track

Yeah, that's about what this one would look like- not sure how well it would do for 3 hours on the highway though!

It will travel fine for 3 hours. My buddy drove his to Rallycross Nationals 2 days each way with his technically like that. See Rallyecross thread for that pict.

Ashyukun wrote:

MattGent wrote: I do it this way

That's what I'd like to do- but I don't think the car has a trailer hitch on it...

That looks like it's putting a pretty long torque arm of force on the hitch..... How does it ride?

I have a steel hitch carrier but it's 2" and the receiver on the answer is the 1.25" sort so an adapter would be needed.

Bare wheels

I can't fit even one stock wheel/tire in my trunk. The car actually has had two flats since I've owned it. Once stranding my wife on the interstate 5 hours from home when she called for a tow and once when I was driving it and I learned that the stock wheel/tire does not fit in the trunk. Of course it was raining so I had to drive home with a wet gritty tire on the passenger seat.

In reply to Ashyukun:

That won't be a problem at all. I'm daily driving my mazda2 100mi per day on Continental winter tires. All 85-100 degree days. In over 6k miles of doing this, there is 1/32 of tread difference from new.