P205/75 R14 or P215/70 R14

-

Princess Valiant

A.K.A. Rainy Day Auto
FABO Gold Member
Joined
Dec 14, 2011
Messages
26,371
Reaction score
23,756
Location
Colorado
I think I have it narrowed down one of those for a 74 duster with a 360 /904. I am after pretty stock appearing because I am only going to street drive it.

anyone have a pic of either of those sizes on an A body ? I will be using the original rally wheels
 
I have 215 70 14 on stock 5.5 wide factory steel wheels on my 67 Dart. And KH front disk. ( KH disk widen the track by 1/2 " each side IIRC)

They fit well but look a bit ballooned.

Not sure if there are any significant differences 67 Dart to 74 duster in the fender area.
 
I would use the 70 series. A little width adds a lot to the look.
 
Just be aware that the sizing is not a tread width measurement. It is a section width. Meaning that you would measure at the sidewalls max width not the tread.
Tread widths vary from each manufacturer. So does the height.
In the tire trade tires only had to meet D.O.T. standards of load carrying capacity for a given size @32psi at that time.
Pmetric and European tires now carry load index numbers speed rating. Like a 98H as an example.Very confusing on modern cars when you try to change the factory fit. These sizes are on the driver door pillar.
205/75-14 tires in this day and age will be either a very low quality generic brand or a 6 or 8 ply rating trailer towing tire.
215/70-14 or even 205/70-14 would work but even these sizes are rare today unless you go for a classic tire style
Currently BFG T/A copy, Mickey Thompson street, made by Cooper tires now owned by Goodyear as most companies have been bought out by the bigger companies.
And the 70 series tires would be radial construction s oppsed to the 205/75-14 bias ply tires.
No comparison on the road. Radial by far is the best handling, riding, wearing, brakeing tires.
 
A few of my favorite sites:
Tire Size Comparison
https://www.tirerack.com/tires/Tire...&rearRatio=70&rearDiameter=14&performance=ALL
https://www.discounttire.com/fitmentresult/tires/size/205-75-14

At Tire Rack and a few other sites:
205/75R14 seems to have slightly more selections than 215/70R14. A good chunk of them seem to be trailer tires as @MoparLeo stated.
15 inch tires are not much better.
I keep forgetting how skinny these guys are. I just put on 205/65-R15 winter tires on my duster. Let me just say it just looks... funky now that I have all this rear wheel well space, but then again I'm going from 275/40R17 rear tires.

From the side she don't look too bad though, just don't look at her rear.
 
Last edited:
Here are 205/70-14s

IMG_1268.jpeg
 
BTW , those are Michelins .
Traction , ride , noise and wear has been excellent for 20,000+ miles.
I just scored some 15x7 steel wheels so I will be replacing these tires with a set of 215/65-15s or such . Havent decided yet.
 
I have 215 70 14 on 5.5 inch rallye's on the front of my Satellite.

They look like they should have come that way from the factory.

Previously I had 235/60's and they did look a bit "baloon-y"
 
I put 215/70/15’s mounted on crager s/s 15x7 rims and they rubbed the fender lip at the full turn position. This is on my 75 Duster. Offset on rims probably were the cause, but it didn’t look enough to cause concern when I chose front tire size. Discount Tire switched them out ( I didn’t drive on them) for free with some 205/65/15’s, which fit. Telling you all this to point out it’s best to measure everything before you buy tires/rims, like I didn’t do.
 
Princess, our cars (74) came with a DR 78-14 tire. The equivalent is a 205/70/14 and they fit perfect. Perfect for the front that is. On the rear they usually look better with a wider wheel ex. 8" with 4.25-4.5 backspace
 
Last edited:
215's 70's are perfect for the front for both looks and handling. Dusters have huge rear wheel wells and look odd with small rear tires. A bit bigger on the rear to fill the wheel well up a bit is a little more pleasing to look at for most guys?
 
So to help answer a fitment question...

Is the Dart / Duster front fender opening the same 67 thru 76?

I am aware the basic front fender will bolt on but I seem to recall there were some openings changes (might be the rear I'm thinking of)

If so my 67 dart with 215R 70 14 on stock 5.5 steel wheels fits ni rubbing BUT is very close on the front lip in a turn.

My point is a shorter tire would eliminate that.

I'll post a photo in a few
 
I have been running various brands of 215/70-14 for 30 years on 5.5" rally wheels, on a Barracuda fastback. I suspect Dart/Duster has a little more room in the front wheel well. Currently with Cooper Cobras which have been great so far.

IMG_4397.jpeg
IMG_4404.jpeg
 
14" tires are not hard to find online. They don't stock them at local stores because they don't sell them or stock them. They are busy making money on soccer moms daily cars and jacked up 4x4's

Go here https://www.tires-easy.com/tires/
Go to Walmart, good prices and free shipping.

Don't go to the tire rack or discount tire online. Too expensive.
 
I had the local old-school tire shop order mine and install them. Easy-peasy.
 
anyone have a pic of either of those sizes on an A body ?

'64 Dart, all original, with 6.50-13 tires, and with 185/70-14 tires:

'64 Dart 6.50-13.jpg



'64 Dart 185:70-14.jpg


(sorry the lighting isn't the same).

Speedometer is dead-accurate with the new tires (didn't drive it fast enough to check with the old tires).

– Eric
 
I have 215/70/14s on my dad's 70 Swinger. I believe that is the closest to the E-70 14s that the car originally came with. I saw a dart at carlise with that size and It just looked right too me. I like alot of sidewall, heck I'm in the minority but I don't even like 15s on alot of Abodys.
Screenshot_20241212_134503_Gallery.jpg

Screenshot_20241212_134721_Gallery.jpg
 
67 Dart
215R70-14
Cooper Cobra
Stock 14x5.5 steel wheel
KH front disks
Alignment is not bad, tracks straight on the interstate, not too easy to turn. I mention the alignment because if the upper a arms are all the way forward the distance to the fender will change.

PXL_20241212_185935674.jpg


Turned a few degrees to the right
PXL_20241212_190006249.jpg



Turned
PXL_20241212_190205338.jpg


Straight
PXL_20241212_190124238.jpg
 
14" tires are not hard to find online. They don't stock them at local stores because they don't sell them or stock them. They are busy making money on soccer moms daily cars and jacked up 4x4's

Go here https://www.tires-easy.com/tires/
Go to Walmart, good prices and free shipping.

Don't go to the tire rack or discount tire online. Too expensive.
Not entirely true:
I've done extensive research & shopping for tires. There's hardly a difference with all these online tire stores. I bought a set of 4 205/65R15 winter tires earlier this year, and believe or not Tire Rack had the best deal, was there cheaper ones? Yes, but they were horribly reviewed, the ones I got were rated #2 in their category. It's all a balancing act for me, to me prices do matter but it's on the bottom of the list.
You are correct about Walmart as they do have closeout specials on some tires (even after filtering out trailer tires) vs. Discount tires, but not all of them will have these specials.
But even Tire Rack will sometime have online specials, I bought a set of 4 General Altimax Arctic 12 205/65R15's for $85 a piece vs. $111 normal priced.
A good example are these same exact Milestar tires:
Milestar Discount.jpg

Milestar Walmart.jpg

Yes, I am extremely picky on tires, I will not buy crappy cheap tires. I've had several cheap Chinese branded tires before that had failed on me, one of them quite catastrophically. The Triangle brand I had failed only after about 10,000 miles due to the sidewall plies separating, luckily it didn't blow but I still had to replace the tires, they replaced them by pairs and it's cool that I got two free replacements. But the Westlakes I had on my old Accord blew apart on I-80 about 30 miles away from Evanston, WY. the tires were only 2 years old. I narrowly missed hitting a Semi because having your front tire blow at 80 mph is enough to cause certain involuntary soiling of your undergarments. That was also fun putting on the spare on the side of the road while having cars and semi's zoom past you at 70-80+ mph. Big thanks to WY State Patrol trooper watching over me as I changed out the tires, awesome people. (Yes I had to take one of the rear tires and put it up front due to the donut spare being a different size).
The only non-Chinese tire I had failed on me was a Continental E rated tire that was on a POS 02' GM K3500 Crewcab it was a GOV that me and my team drove to and from Camp Grafton, ND and SLC, Utah. (with driving GOV's alone I probably got a total of 500K to 600K driving miles under my belt)
Bottom line is, I don't like cheaping out on tires and brakes but I'm also not going to spend on $300+ a piece on tires that are over rated. Again it's all a balancing act to me. If you're just going a short distance and not really driving that much, then going cheap and quick is fine.
Some more examples:
Tire easy.png


Tire Rack..png

And yes Tire Rack has free shipping as well.
 
Most all of WalMart's tires are made to their (cheaper) specifications and different than the same appearing tire somewhere else, so be careful. I wouldn't buy tires from WalMart just for that reason.
 
i don't know if you were lumping milestar in with the cheap hong kong phooey tires or not?

but i agree, there's several cromulent tires available in that size-- those toyo's or some Khumo's would probably be my choice for a value buy if i didn't want to spend cooper cobra money (and i'm not buying BFG's).

can confirm on tire rack though. i bought the potenza RE's and had them mounted and balanced at the homestead. the tires had a special going so i got a smoking deal, free shipping and the guy that did the install was very professional.
 
"Cromulent" ?
Holy cow, man....I had to look that one up. You win the internet for a day, Sir!
 
The big thing is there's no "everything is in one store". What I did is I researched a bunch of tire shops. I've also looked at Les Shwab, Vulcan Tire, Big-O and checked a local chain Buffalo Bros.
Funny, the kids at Buffalo Bros. begged me to bring in my car for them to work on, once I finish replacing ball joints I might take them up on their offer as I will need an alignment.
14 and 15 inch tire selections are getting more and more scarce. A buddy of mine wanted 255/60R15 tires for his Nova, I told him "good luck" you generally have 2 selections, 3 at most.
At Summit Racing (you think Tire Rack is supposedly expensive, try shopping tires here) you have a little more selection but it's mostly Street Radial drags and specialty tires that are $300+ a pop.
I really liked Tire Rack's site mainly for their research articles and as they did some numerous head to head testing on the various tires based on categories.
@junkyardhero
Well, Milestars are actually Taiwanese. Never had these tires myself but I did find out that Maxxis, Kenda and Federal are all Taiwanese.
I have Toyo Extensa's right now and I'm loving it. The Japanese make some good tires. Kumho's are Korean and they're ok... I had Sailun's before and they were ugh... Not good. Another Korean company Nexen is decent.
Us Koreans need to get our **** together if we want to get keep up with those Nipponese dorks.
 
-
Back
Top