Using 16" factory alloy wheels from '93 Concorde on '03 Grand Caravan Sport?

Hi, my 3.5L '93 Chrysler Concorde with factory optional 16" alloy
wheels just gave up the ghost (threw a rod), and being "in the family
way" I am (sigh ...) replacing it with a 3.3L '03 Dodge Grand Caravan
Sport, currently running on the factory standard 15" steel wheels.

It occurs to me that before scrapping the Concorde, maybe I should try
to use the wheels off of it on the GC Sport -- especially since I live
in Wisconsin & plan to buy dedicated winter tires for this van, I
figure it makes a lot of sense & convenience to mount the winter tires
on the 15" (and narrower) steel wheels, and the summertime tires on
the 16" alloys. Not only would each wheel size make handling more
optimum for conditions, but I would also have less hassle in swapping
at the end of each season, no need to take tires off rims.

But ... my only question is, will those 16" factory option alloys from
the '93 concorde go on the '03 Grand Caravan Sport? I know lug nut
configuration, etc matters, but I'm not sure what else to worry about
(does width matter that much, if wheels are 6.5" or 7"?), and I'm not
sure where to go to find out the lug info. If it is useful
information to anyone, the tires on the '93 Concorde are 225/65r16.

It seems to me that if I could find the specs for the 16" '93 Concorde
alloys & the optional 16" wheels that were available for the '03 Grand
Caravans, that I could just compare those two, and if they match
exactly, I am good to go? (and if they don't ... I don't know then
what) Does that make sense? Does my idea for using the 2 sets of
wheels make sense? Anyone know where I can find the info to confirm
it will work? Ideally I would love to get an answer to this question
straight out , but even just a pointer in the right direction would
help a lot.

Thanks for reading!

Mark

 

nahhhhhhh send those wheels to me to put on my 94 concorde!! LOL

 

Half the answer is here:
http://www.dodgeintrepid.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=15837 -
kind of like the sound of one hand clapping.

I can tell you that the bolt pattern *is* the same. The other
considerations are offset, and strength. I do know that people have
definitely gone the other way, i.e., used the Caravan wheels on LH cars
with no trouble. Don't quote me on this, but I believe some of the
wheels on LH's and Caravans came from the factory with the same wheel
for certain configurations and certain periods of time - but again, I
could be wrong.

One thing in your favor: You're wanting to put wheels on a vehicle that
presently has smaller wheels. If you were going the other way, if the
brakes were different sizes, you could have a problem with the smaller
wheels not clearing the larger brakes. At least that is not an issue
for what you're trying to do.

Hopefully someone here will have a definitive answer for you. If not,
you might also try posting to www.dodgeintrepid.com and the 300M ezboard
- people there are always pushing the edge and know what works and what
doesn't.

Bill Putney
(to reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my
address with "x")

 

just curious.........when going from 15's to 16's....is the speedo gonna
work right ?

 

Weren't the 94 LHS wheels used on Town and Country's? Call the Chrysler
parts department and ask them if that's the same wheel. It sure looks the
same to me. My point is, of course, that if so then your wheels will fit.

 

It just means you go to a lower profile tire to keep the effective tread
diameter and circumference (distance traveled per rotation) within the
tolerance band expected for speedometer and odometer. Chrysler does
that on their production vehicles with different size wheels - with few
exceptions, the tire size is made to give the same speedometer/odometer
readings with no adjustments in the computer pinion factors. You should
simply find out what tire size came on the van if it had come with 16"
wheels from the factory, and go with that.

Here's a well-known and useful page to look at - it allows you to
determine what totally different size tires will give you the same
speedometer reading: http://www.miatanet.com/garage/tirecalc.html. If
you check the two factory tire sizes (15" vs. 16") with that page, it
will show the difference in speedometer reading to be small
(insignificant, for example, a 1% error in speedometer reading would be
0.6 mph at 60 mph).

Bill Putney
(to reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my
address with "x")

 

What tyre size are you currently using on your Grand Caravan?


Gerald