Club 80-90 Forums

That 'flywheel effect' of larger wheels and heavier tyres Glen mentions is not inconsiderable and one of the reasons the Syncro 16 has larger brakes.
It would increase urban fuel consumption, as you never get back all you put in during acceleration, the effect being equivalent to a few percent increase in vehicle mass.

There are many other effects of larger wheel size, but for a given fixed speed/revs, most others would be negative e.g. wheel windage drag.
With larger and more torquey engines, cruising fuel consumption should improve if the gearing is increased, up to the point it becomes overgeared

I don't think I will go too silly on tyre size next time. My last van had 29" & might have been a bit large. I guess a 195x15 would be a good size.

Does anyone run Porsche wheels with adaptors to get over the stud length problem, or is this a bit of a no no?

Severeal run larger VW wheels with adaptors e.g. SyncroDoug, Andy Syncro-Nutz

I run 225/70/15 road tyres on 15x7 Ronal alloys for normal use and 215/75/15 BFG M/T for fun. (pics in my garage) The handling on the road tyres is fine and there is no decernable road noise and with power steering, the slower speeds are no problem. They are 6.75% larger on overall diameter than standard which is enough to make your speedo more accurate. They are heavier of course than the standard VW offerings but this is to be expected and there is a 'flywheel effect' and more drag. I have fitted a South African big brake kit as the T25 needs it anyway and with bigger wheels, definately - although Russel will not agree - and sure VW put large brakes on the 16" and they didnt do that for the fun of it.
I ran 225/70/15 on my 2.1DJ and it improved the handling, performance and MPG. ( ... and I think they look oh so cool ) It remains to be seen how they perform on my 1.9 AAZ. The only thing that Im not sure about is the correct tyre pressures but seem to be ok at around 2.3 bar

I guess these would be a bit big?



I had 29" on my old van & that was about as big as I would have wanted to go. Many told me they were too big anyway.

I just like my standard tyres 205 80 16's, with my standard bigger brakes, longer trailing arms, stiffer dampers...supersize?? nah just the standard please

The Syncro I am interested in buying has had the off road tyres swiped off it & a set of standard T25 rims put on. It would be rude not to put something bigger on.

Besides, it's only a 14".

Here is one of my old ones:

Pete Nice wrote:The Syncro I am interested in buying has had the off road tyres swiped off it & a set of standard T25 rims put on.

Many were built with standard 5.5J rims and 185R14 tyres. 205R14 tyres on 6J rims was only an option, not standard. Tyres probubly wern't stupidly agressive from the factory eather, save that for the 16 which has the better tyre avalability). They got little spats on the back of the arches to catch the crap comming off the wider wheels. If your going for a JX diesel I'd resist big tyres as it'll affect gearing too much. You can engineer around that with an AAZ or TDI. Not sure what the limit is but mine feals nice on 27" tyres and felt like it was working a bit hard at 60MPH with 215R14 - now got lower gearing but can go faster! (and thats not just the gearing affecting the speedo error)

205R16 is around 29" so I think you'll be needing the arms/arches mods (like 16") before you get that far.

Think I will go with caution this time. The old white one didn't have any clearance issues even off road (Not aggressive off roading).

I could use a 16" Porsche wheel & a smaller tyre. As you say there is a good range of tyres in 16"

The old van was also a JX & the gearing was effected by the tyres. It did drive ok though even with no power steering.

Thought you guys might be interested in the figures I have been getting in my new Syncro. It's a 2.1MV in a Reimo Poptop converted van. It has a bloody great plough on the front with a spare wheel attached so that won't be helping much.

Date Vehicle Odometer Filled Up Liters Cost/Liter Total Cost Miles Imperial MPG Corrected MPG
14 Apr 2009 14:51 Syncro 83228 Full 30.1 £0.94 £28.26 150 6.63 22.62 24.89
13 Apr 2009 20:24 Syncro 83078 Full 39.8 £0.93 £36.97 139 8.77 15.86 17.44
6 Apr 2009 14:45 Syncro 82939 Full 46.05 £0.93 £42.78 197 10.14 19.42 21.36
4 Apr 2009 20:28 Syncro 82742 Full 36.37 £0.91 £33.06 142 8.01 17.73 19.50
4 Apr 2009 17:55 Syncro 82600 Full 46.41 £0.94 £43.58 149 10.22 14.58 16.03
3 Apr 2009 23:02 Syncro 82451 Full 38.75 £0.93 £36.00 8.54 0.00 0.00

Will re-publish my latest XL chart in a day or two

But looking like 22.5 M-way @ 70 true GPS (75 + down, 60~65 up climbs) and about 25 when cruising around

Was wondering if there was any difference in running LPG to petrol.
In a 2.1 2WD Doka. Filled empty tank with 80ltr of LPG. Drove exactly 350 miles, covering....Dual carriageways, A roads, B roads, Urban, Loaded tip runs, even towing another T25, before tank ran dry & I switched to petrol.

19.89 mpg

If you go on the Alt Fuel pages you'll probably find they reckon you get 10 to 20% less with LPG (ish)

Go on then HMann, Now for the hard bit.......If I paid 59.9p per litre & petrol was 96p.......what mileage per litre am I getting compred to petrol price? (If that makes sense?)

31.876

minus any difference between LPG and petrol mpg figures

If we say 10% less using LPG then the equiv. would be about 28.7 mpg
If we say 20% less using LPG then the equiv. would be about 25 mpg