a friend of mine slid into a curb and popped the front passenger tire on her 1999 cavalier. She lives in a town 30 miles away from me,so I wasn't able to get there in time to help. the guys that helped her put the spare tire on the front of the car. Is this ok? I don't have an owner's manual for the car and have heard on some cars it is not ok to put the spare on the front due to different sizes of the tries. this is the stock size spare that came with the car. thanks!! Ben

because is front wheel drive and you don't want one axle spinning faster than the other.
The wheel bearing won't take it too long.
now,
it would be a good idea to replace the rear wheel with the spare and put the rear wheel to the front.
on a front wheel drive car the rear wheels run free and size does not matter.

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The wheel bearing won't take it too long.

right idea, wrong part. the bearing will never know the difference, it'll just spin a little bit faster. its the differential that takes the hit, and the average person doesnt want to pay what it costs to replace one of those. yes, put one of the rear tires on the front to make it even, hell, swap both the rears to the front as im sure she's due for a rotation.



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A short drive (less than 5 miles) should not make a difference. It doesn't say in the manual either way that is / is not OK to use on the front.

I used one on the front, ran it about 50 miles too.

It will be fine until she can get it fixed.

I went ahead and changed tires and put the spare on the back to be safe. I am not trying to argue with the guys that said I should change the tire,but I read everything in her owner's manual that said anything about the spare tire and changing the tires,and it didn't say anything about putting the spare on the back and not the drive wheels. Surely if this were the case,the manual would have said so? Not everybody that drives a car knows enough about them to know you can't drive with 2 different size tires on a drive axle. I was just thinking GM would have put it in the owner's manual to save there butts when people that didn't know any different put the small tire up front and something broke because of it.