Club 80-90 Forums

Hi all. After some good advice from on here, I changed my springs and shocks to 50mm Avos and Bilstein B8s a while ago and continued running the original wheels.

I’m thinking of changing to 16’’ x 7” alloys from ikperformance. Will I notice much difference in the ride/handling?

Also thinking of changing to the 40mm Eibachs and B6s or spax performance shocks to try and improve the ride further. Be interested in any thoughts - particularly around change in wheel size. Cheers.

The size of the wheels is not entirely, but largely, irrelevant as it really depends more on the dimensions of your chosen tyre, but generally speaking for on road use:

- wider tyres are harder to turn at low speeds, and a wider wheel will tend towards the choice of a wider tyre;
- 'taller' tyres give a softer ride as there is more side wall to flex, so larger diameter wheels will tend towards a harder ride as they reduce the side wall size for the same diameter tyre;
- larger diameter wheels allow larger maximum diameter tyres to be fitted which can uprate your gearing, but which could put strain on your engine and drive train if you increase tyre size too much;

There are other things to consider in terms of tyre contact patch, tyre profile, etc, but they're mainly to do with grip and flotation in off road use.

I went up to 235/55 17 from 195/65/15 with no problems but mine is an auto which I think deals with the taller 6% ish without a problem

Thanks guys. Might need to think about the gearing as running a four speed, although I don’t think moving up to 16” is moving up to ‘big’ wheels. Imagine the Subaru should be able to cope with the extra strain.

I have 16" wheels but the overall diameter with tyres is spec VW

Sorry I know it’s a bay but I’ve got 16” with 205/80 All Terrains so pretty big compared to standard and it drives great!

I’ve got 16x7j wheels on my bus. Fitted 205/50/16 tyres and the speedo runs accurate.

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