Changed the wheel size? Your speedometer will lie to you

Changing the size of the wheels and tires will cause some of the car's instruments to work incorrectly

Change will interfere with the way the car measures speed (Photo: AutoPapo | Disclosure)
By Boris Feldman
Published on 2026-04-28 at 07:00 AM
Updated on 2026-04-28 at 07:25 AM

What happens when you change the wheel and tire of a car for two smaller ones, reducing the overall diameter of the wheel plus tire and still leaving the car lower?

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For reasoning purposes, imagine that you changed the original wheels and tires of your car for a wheel with a scooter tire. Let’s suppose that when your car’s wheel makes a full turn, the car has gone 2.5 m, for example, but if it has a scooter wheel, it will only go 1 m.

Yes, but the speedometer and odometer on the dashboard don’t know that you changed the wheel and will register speed and space traveled (mileage) completely wrong. Do you understand why the speedometer and odometer start to indicate the wrong speed and mileage when the wheels are increased or decreased?

Boris Feldman

Journalist and engineer with 50 years of experience in the automotive press. Led newspaper and television teams and hosts the AutoPapo program on radio stations across the country.

Boris Feldman
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