Hi All,

I saw at a wreckers this morning a set of 4, 16" alloy rims for $400 without tyres. I was told they are suitable for my EL 98 Falcon. I have the stock rims on right now which are 15" running 205 65 15 tyres which I would have liked to put on some alloys I do find. Obviously I can't with the ones I saw today.

My main questions with the 16" rims: will they affect the speedo much and if so, is it easily re-calibrated?

Will they render my spare wheel useless if I have to use it for a puncture?

Will they greatly alter the handling/feel of my vehicle?

These rims are in vgc. Only 1 of them has a deep scratch near the edge about 2cm long. Other than that, they will clean up very nicely. The CSA hub logos are all faded and look a bit sad, but I guess not too important and probably could even be fixed. I am going to have a look at another place tomorrow though which have just had an el wagon arrive with alloys on, and see what they are like.

Mark.

putting 16's on there will not through the speedo out that much,if at all. from 15 to 16" u will reduce the profile aswell. i have been told that all speedo's can be 10% out, so i wouldnt worry about it. the best way to check,is get someone next to youin another car, and match what speed they are doing and compare the speed shown on speedo.

I am pretty sure there is a speedo calculator on here someware, put in diff ratio, tyre sizes etc, try the search function.

The spare should be OK for short time use, as castlegreyskull said, 16's run a lower profile tyre to compensate for extra rim hight.

Have a look at this:

http://www.fordmods.com/forums/documents.php?doc=30

if you have the right size tyres fitted your speedo will still be accurate. the tyre wall is reduced to compensate for the larger wheels - at a guess off my head I'd say the corrent tyre size would be something like 225/55r16.

as for your spare, not useless, you could still run it to drive a short distance to replace your blown tyre, as the overall diameter of the tyre will be about the same, but definatly do not do that for a long period of time

Ah ok so the lower profile tyre compensates for the larger wheel diameter and keeps the speedo more or less in check. I hadn't really thought about that before, but it makes sense now. That's good because I read about the EEC-V PCM combined module needing changes if the speedo gear had to be changed, that was starting to sound getting very involved. I will have another look at the wheels anyway to see if I like them enough, plus there are some others I'm going to have a look at tomorrow....well today looking at the time it is now.

Thanks for the input so far guys.

I had to run my 205/65/15 spare on the back after a puncture, at the time the rest of car had 215/60/15s, despite the very minor difference in size, my LSD diff didnt like it and would clunk for a few seconds after coasting to a stop.
Eventually realised it had to do with the tyre, I swapped the repaired tyre back on and the diff stopped clunking.

yeh, it will be worse with an LSD cause there will be more pressure on it..

cant imagine a SS would have any major problems for a drive home

Hi , check this site out , it can do all the calculations to ensure the rolling ratio that you want to change to is compatible


http://www.carbibles.com/tyre_bible.html

Deanjorr

thats a nice link there deanjorr... muchly appreciated, plenty to read on there.

cheers