Opinions on Steelies & Tires

[PatrickGMC70]

Well I was planning on turning my attention to tires eventually, but fate has forced my hand. Last night I went into the garage and saw this...



Totally crazy that it blew out just sitting in the garage. I've definitely got a guardian angel looking out for me that this happened in the garage and not on the highway.

So, now I have to get tires. I was always hoping that new tires would be part of some massive drop spindle/5 lug/disc brake/rims upgrade. But that's just not in the cards now.

So, I'm going to clean up my steelies before mounting new tires. My first instinct is to repaint them white. But I've seen some body color wheels that look cool too. I'm leaning toward the white, if for no other reason than my body paint isn't bright so putting shiny gold wheels next to oxidized body paint wouldn't look too great. Suggestions are welcome though.

Next, is the tire size. The current tires are 225/75 R15 with a narrow whitewall. This seems like an odd-ball size. A quick search on here shows that the 70 series is a bit more popular and 235 for width. I want something that will look good but keep my speedo from going crazy. I don't know a lot about tires, but it seems that small adjustments in size can lead to big differences in price.

I'm also inclined to ditch the whitewalls because they're expensive and hard to find locally. Also, if I go with the white wheels, the white wall tires may get lost anyway. Opinions?

Last in my long list of questions: should I leave the hub caps as they are (to match the aged paint) or clean them up? Any suggestions about how to clean/polish/restore them?

Thanks for any suggestions. Happy 4th of July everyone!

Pic of truck:


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