Club 80-90 Forums

Has anyone seen or put together a table which shows the ET of a wheel and the spacer width needed?
I am looking at alternative van wheels. Specifically Mercedes wheels and a lot of them have an offset of around 46. I thought it would be nice to have a table which listed the ET and the size of the spacer required to bring it down to the magic ET of 30. Is each degree of offset equal to a mm? ie. If I had a wheel with an offset of 40 would a 10mm space be required to bring it back to 30?

Yep, each mm of spacer brings the ET / offset down by that ammount of mm

Dont forget that spacers also take up stud length

Offset is in mm and not degrees !!

15" mercedes wheels with an offset of 37 can be used without spacer. I know at least one syncro that has 235/75-15 AT tyres on ET 37 rims, modifies arches and no rubbing.

E D I T: looked up my source, it's ET 37 passat rims with 235/75-15 BFG MT

ET 37 Mercs on mine, no probs, but only 195R15 ATs.

have you tryed those rims off road? I'm wondering if they can take it, they look a little "soft" IMO

ThorAlex wrote:have you tryed those rims off road? I'm wondering if they can take it, they look a little "soft" IMO

I've not taken them properly off road as yet, they're mainly on to raise my gearing for road driving and light muddy bits in relatively flat fields and the like. Apparently it is a problem with these rims,I've read one or two accounts of them getting bent by a good clunk

General consensus was that the strength is there weight rating wise, (I got that in writing from Lemmerz's UK importers) but yes they are a bit soft if given a good bash.

I put the Mercs on as a cheap & cheerful way of testing and comparing tyre sizes as I had the Marshalls sat in my shed with only 50 miles on them, (off a Suzuki that went too far off road ) I was running Multivan alloys on185R14 before, alternated with a set of 215R14 summer tyres, so I was interested to what difference there would be in the handling an manouverability with the 15s as there's a much wider choice of tyres out there. To be honest I've been very happy with them so it's just a case of saving up for some Mefros now

I think that spare ET37 is under the doka seat Andy...

I have a set of the merc rims on my Doka (ET30).. they are ok for most uses... but yes.. if they get hooked on a rock they bend.. I have bent 2 of the 7 I have.. I want some mefro's but I can get the merc rims easily and cheaply... so until a set of mefor's come up at the right price, or I can afford to buy some.. they will have to do

toomanytoys wrote:I think that spare ET37 is under the doka seat Andy...

A timely reminder Si . I might have a spare couple of hours next week when I could have a ride down and collect it - will PM you over the weekend when I know what I'm doing....