only one member's put on 15's, and he had to grind down the brake calipers to make them fit.

Generally, no - 16" is minimum size because of the brake calipers.

 

15"s

The rims I am looking at are stock rims off of a 200 jeep wrangler the bolt pattern matches but I havent tried to put them on yet. any Ideas?

I also have an 08 Jeep Liberty and those rims do fit on my patriot but they are 16's

 

I'll bet they don't fit. I measured a lot of different Jeep 15's when I was looking. You might get lucky if they're alloys.

Measure the max OD of your brakes and calipers and then measure the inside of a 15" rim. You'll see. It'll save you taking off the wheels.

 

http://www.jeeppatriot.com/forum/showthread.php?t=8723

here's the only set of 15's that have been made to fit - note he ground down the brake calipers, although I've been looking for where he said that...

 

It was actually another member, koolkatken83, who did the caliper grinding to make 15's fit. Here's the thread - http://www.jeeppatriot.com/forum/showthread.php?t=14029&highlight=grind

Now, could you explain why a smaller rim won't fit without issues? If it has the same offset and backspacing then why does it not clear the caliper if the diameter of the rim is 1" smaller? Heckler knows very well that I am dumb about wheels.

 

It was actually another member, koolkatken83, who did the caliper grinding to make 15's fit. Here's the thread - http://www.jeeppatriot.com/forum/showthread.php?t=14029&highlight=grind

That's the one I was thinking of!

 

I bought a 15" steel Caliber rim. It would not fit. It is about 1/8" too small. I set it up in the lathe and turned it bigger, but I decided it wouldn't be safe to run it that way. I didn't want to grind down the caliper because it was zinc plated so nicely that I did not want to ruin the finish and have it rust. If you had a wheel where the bolt circle was more centered in the wheel, i.e. not as much back spacing, kick the tire out more, a 15"er like that would probably fit.

 

Yeah I had to grind the caliper down a small amount. I don't recommend anything that could potentially be unsafe, but so far no problems. I also powder coated the caliper after the grinding so it wouldn't rust.

 

You never thought of making spacers out of 1/4" plate or the like

 

I put 15" Ravine alloys on my '08 (after reading JeepinLg's post). The only mod he did was to grind the plastic weld in the inner fender (typical if running larger diameter tires). I used Cooper Discoverer ATR's 235-70-15, about the same diameter as my old 17" SRA's. No issues yet after around 6000 miles. Mileage dropped from 22.5 mpg to around 20.5 - 21 around town. JeepinLg's post http://http://www.jeeppatriot.com/forum/showthread.php?t=8723