Honda HR-V wheels for winter

E

eejake

New Member
Hello all,

Its my first time posting on the forum, I wanted to thank everyone for posting all the useful information here. It helped me with the purchase and to get a great price as well as helped with the small adventure I've been through post purchase (said adventure did get me some pretty interesting photos of the underbody systems with all the covers removed that I'll share in another thread). I'm a long time DIY car person and I always use a second set of used OEM rims for winter tires. It took me a bit of research but the HR-V wheels (17x7.5 with identical center bore and a 55mm offest) turned out to be a nice fit for the Clarity in my opinion. Specifically they're 2018 wheels with Nokian Hakapellitta R3's at 215/55 R17. The slight offset brings the tires in a bit and I think that should help keep the slush from spraying out onto the sides of the body. The wheels were about 300$ shipped from a junkyard and the Haka's were about 800 installed with a road hazard warranty if anyone is interested.

20191012_104413_HDR.webp 20191012_103455.webp 20191012_103522_HDR.webp 20191012_103529.webp 20191012_103541.webp

PS: I didn't add the pinstripes, haha, they look tacky and I plan on removing them.
 
eejake said:
Hello all,

Its my first time posting on the forum, I wanted to thank everyone for posting all the useful information here. It helped me with the purchase and to get a great price as well as helped with the small adventure I've been through post purchase (said adventure did get me some pretty interesting photos of the underbody systems with all the covers removed that I'll share in another thread). I'm a long time DIY car person and I always use a second set of used OEM rims for winter tires. It took me a bit of research but the HR-V wheels (17x7.5 with identical center bore and a 55mm offest) turned out to be a nice fit for the Clarity in my opinion. Specifically they're 2018 wheels with Nokian Hakapellitta R3's at 215/55 R17. The slight offset brings the tires in a bit and I think that should help keep the slush from spraying out onto the sides of the body. The wheels were about 300$ shipped from a junkyard and the Haka's were about 800 installed with a road hazard warranty if anyone is interested.View attachment 6350 View attachment 6351 View attachment 6352 View attachment 6353 View attachment 6354

PS: I didn't add the pinstripes, haha, they look tacky and I plan on removing them.
Click to expand...

Back in the day, when I lived in areas where snow was a regular occurrence, I typically ran Hakka's in the winter (had a guy once say..."those look more like teeth than tires!") I usually had a pile of wheels laying around where I swapped out regularly -- but those were usually 14", which wouldn't fit a Clarity.

It's almost sad that I only see snow a couple of times a year, and then it rarely covers the streets.

This looks like a good solution for you! Congrats!!
 
I am leaning towards doing the same thing. I found a set of Blizzak WS80 tires in 215/55 R17 for $428.63 with local pick up from Tirerack.com. I work for a Honda dealer and I can get a set of slightly damaged HR-V wheels for cheap. This seems like a great solution for winter rims and tires for the Clarity. I compared the tires diameters to the stock size and they are almost a perfect match.
 
I decided to go ahead with it. I'll update this thread once I have them on my car. Thanks OP for the idea to use HR-V wheels. It should work out perfectly and there are much cheaper winter tire options like I found.
 
i hope the HR-V wheels are up to the job for the additional weight. The Clarity weighs about a thousand pounds more than the HRV. I did use Accord pull offs for my winter Clarity wheels. The Accord is closer in weight to the Clarity and seemed to be fairly common for people to replace the brand new Accord wheels.
 
Richard Kelly said:
i hope the HR-V wheels are up to the job for the additional weight. The Clarity weighs about a thousand pounds more than the HRV. I did use Accord pull offs for my winter Clarity wheels. The Accord is closer in weight to the Clarity and seemed to be fairly common for people to replace the brand new Accord wheels.
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I think they both should be able to handle the same weight since they are both OEM 17" x 7.5" wheels but I have no way of verifying that. Regardless I doubt the HR-V wheels would just critically fail. If they can't handle the weight I imagine they would bend easily when hitting a pot hole. If that ends up happening I will replace them with something known to be stronger. I will post my results and add some photos after I have them installed.
 
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eejake said:
Hello all,

Its my first time posting on the forum, I wanted to thank everyone for posting all the useful information here. It helped me with the purchase and to get a great price as well as helped with the small adventure I've been through post purchase (said adventure did get me some pretty interesting photos of the underbody systems with all the covers removed that I'll share in another thread). I'm a long time DIY car person and I always use a second set of used OEM rims for winter tires. It took me a bit of research but the HR-V wheels (17x7.5 with identical center bore and a 55mm offest) turned out to be a nice fit for the Clarity in my opinion. Specifically they're 2018 wheels with Nokian Hakapellitta R3's at 215/55 R17. The slight offset brings the tires in a bit and I think that should help keep the slush from spraying out onto the sides of the body. The wheels were about 300$ shipped from a junkyard and the Haka's were about 800 installed with a road hazard warranty if anyone is interested.View attachment 6350 View attachment 6351 View attachment 6352 View attachment 6353 View attachment 6354

PS: I didn't add the pinstripes, haha, they look tacky and I plan on removing them.
Click to expand...
I can't thank you enough for this suggestion. I was able to get the same wheels at a junkyard for dirt cheap and am getting Bridgestone WS-80 at close-out price from Mavis (beat tirerack price). They are going to be installed tomorrow. One question, can yo use the same lug nuts as on the Clarity?
 
Claritydreamer said:
I can't thank you enough for this suggestion. I was able to get the same wheels at a junkyard for dirt cheap and am getting Bridgestone WS-80 at close-out price from Mavis (beat tirerack price). They are going to be installed tomorrow. One question, can yo use the same lug nuts as on the Clarity?
Click to expand...

I'm sure it's probably too late now, sorry, I don't remember getting an alert for responses showing up in this thread. But, yes, just the stock clarity lugnuts are working well.

As to the earlier question about weight difference, I've handled a lot of wheels and tires in my time and honestly these HRV wheels are some of the most stout stock wheels I've ever come across. They don't seem any thinner/lighter or less strong than the stock wheels. Also, thanks to the switch to 17", there's an additional 1/2" of rubber cushion to protect them from potholes.

Not saying I can definitively prove their equivalence, but as an engineer with a lot of automotive and heavy machine experience, I'm not concerned.
 
So far the HR-V wheels and Blizzak tires are performing well on the Clarity. I drove in a few winter conditions and it performed much better than the stock tires. That is obvious of course. Did it perform as well as my old Acura RL or my wife's MDX? Hell no! Still it performed good enough for me to have confidence approaching the hill next to my house. I'll post again once I've had a lot more winter experiences.
 

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