Smaller Wheels But Bigger Tyres

After 6 years and many tens of thousands of kilometers sterling service from the Cooper STT tyres in metric 235/85 r16 size fitted to genuine #LandRover Deep Dish alloy wheels, we are upgrading once again.

The Coopers against the old wheels he came home with.

When I started thinking about the possibility of new wheels and tyres a little while ago I had an agenda to meet, tougher stance and a more versatile tyres with a slightly taller combination was the criteria that I had in mind.

This is the new wheel and tyre combination that I have just bought.

A set of GT Radial Adventuro M/T

In 33X12.5X15 inch flavour

Mounted on 15X10 ET-32 steel wheels

This is a sample pic of what they will look like mounted on a Discovery 1

So how did we get here exactly?

It all started with a desire to drive a few Welsh lanes and do some off roading in the Highlands of Scotland, so what does that have to do with the wheels and tyres exactly?

Well a lot more than meets the eye!!!

The coopers are an amazing tyre and I have been so impressed by them, very tough, great self cleaning in deep mud and extraordinarily cut resistant in flinty, rocky and stony ground but they are narrow, and on alloy wheels, when driving rocks you need to air down to get a good squishy tyre deformation and maximise your contact with the rocks, 235 cross section will deform a lot but, not enough in my mind, the Coopers will for sure be great in terms of cut resistance but even when aired down they will not have the contact footprint I desire.

Currently I have the Coopers mounted on Land Rover alloy wheels, yes the LR alloys are super strong but when it comes to driving on rocks the alloys are vulnerable to fracturing and splitting under hard impacts and the potential of alloy wheels to become further damaged in the event of a bead being dislodged where as the steel rim could be beaten back into a rough shape that would hold air with a hammer so it has become a worst case scenario for my choice of adopting steel wheels over the more pretty alloys.

Then we come to the way in which I found myself browsing eBay.co.uk and happening across these by chance.

Well basically I knew I wanted steel wheels, I knew I wanted wider tyres and I had a friend on the South coast who had a set of genuine Land Rover Discovery steel wheels going spare after his V8 conversion of his 90, so off I pop to go get them.

Loaded up in the back of my little car.

The plan was to use a courier company to send them up to the North East to a machining company in Scarborough and have them banded out by 50mm and have 20mm trimmed out the back and welded up, it's not uncommon to see some very nice wheels and this is the sort of look I was trying to achieve.

The above is actually a Discovery steel wheel with flipped centres, where the centre is removed and turned around then welded back up, they look super and of course, very original but with a twist as they have a deeper dish.

So what happened?

The courier company did the usual and lost my rims 😠😠😠

I am not going to hold my breath in the naive belief that they could possibly find my 3 foot 6 inch 18 inch wide cardboard cylinder that weighs close to 100lbs, the incompetence of couriers is shocking in this day and age.

You'll see them first when I've finished the welding and we get back out on the tracks and trails.

My little eurobox Peugeot 206 did me proud in carting them home, they're massive in the flesh

Had to tie the boot lid down as it was a bit tight for space 😱😱

I'm still busy cutting and welding up the truck at present but I have got as far as fitting the left side with the new wheels and tyres, they're big!!!

Looks like I am going to have to trim a bit off my winch bumper to stop the corner colliding with my front tyre under full articulation.

Looks like it needs trimmed about here.

Left is the outgoing 235/85 r16 and the right is the new 33X12.5X15

I found it interesting to see how the new rims have a greater offset and apart from being 10" wide over the old 7" wide alloys the offset seems to have pushed the wheels further out from the centre line and thus giving better clearance and improving the turning circle.

As always there is a secondary issue to deal with in the fitting of extra wide rubber, the fact that the tyres now protrude outside the arches, by quite a bit 😱

The tyre catches the bottom of the wing only slightly turning the steering, heaven knows what it would be like going over a bump 😧

Now then, at this point I got all excited and after flicking through an old copy of MaxPower magazine in the doctors office I am going to have a crack at something new, wheel arch/fender flaring and rolling.

Cue Amazon.com for one of these.

You're supposed to bolt it to the hub and roll it round the arch pushing the arch out and stretching it to form enough clearance for the tyres, I might be a little optimistic but I'm going to give it a go.

When I have finished the welding I will roll the arches and post my efforts.

Thanks for looking and like, comment and share 😀