Winter Buying Experience

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2018 Mazda CX-5 Touring with PP
I purchased my 2018 CX-5 in June and decided to get some used winter tires on alloys for easy changeover. The tires are 225/65r17 Firestone Winterforce 2 UV that still have 10-11/32nd of tread. They're mounted on alloy wheels from a Toyota Highlander. So I meet the guy to check them out and they look good. We settle on a price and I take them home.

What I neglected to make myself aware of was the fact that the wheel hub bore of the new wheels needs to be sufficiently sized to fit over the existing one on the CX-5. Spent about 2 hours with my router and various bits removing 1/4" x 1/4" of material that gives the wheel just enough clearance to lay flat on the rotor.

Was definitely a learning experience and I will never make that mistake again. Mount your prospective snow tires before you commit to buying them just to make sure. Unless you like added work that is.

Anyone else have similar experience with their CX-5?
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Well, sorry you had to go through this but looks like you have it figured out now. You do have the right tire size, and a Toyota Highlander (I guessed at the age being around 2012 - 2016?) does use the same bolt pattern as your CX-5 (5 x 114.3) but you are right, the Toyota has a much smaller hub bore. Here are a couple sites that are instrumental in figuring out what tires and wheels will fit a certain vehicle and to search what sizes others use in comparison. Wheel offset is important as well...btw, if the guy was running these winters on a 2012 - 2016 Toyota Highlander he was running the wrong size of tire...about an inch too short in diameter so his odometer and speedometer were off

https://tiresize.com/comparison/ for tires and https://www.wheel-size.com/ for wheels

Nice tires though, you should do great on the ice and snow!
 
Hyundai and Kia have the same hub bore I believe. Mazda is one of the larger. Fitting wheels is not straightforward, and Craigslist ads usually lack the required information to determine fit (unless they are OEM wheels you can look up). I wound up with Mazda 3 wheels, 17" for my winter tires and some used aftermarket 19" wheels that came off off of a Mustang for my for my All Seasons, and then ordered the appropriate hub centric rings from Amazon.

I spent a lot of time on this site: https://www.wheel-size.com/ looking at the hub bore, bolt patterns, and offset of various OEM wheels to see which should fit the CX-5. If you know it was properfly fitted onto a compatible car, you can deduce it will work on the Mazda.

I would have resold the Toyota wheels and tried again. Honda and Nissan are too small hub bore too, BTW.
 
Does this mean that Mazda bearings are bigger? Bigger = better??
 
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