Wheel and Tire choices

There is one good tire on my Commando, so I'm looking into buying some used tires to throw on it. I've got two options for the rims.

Option 1 - 15 x 7 aftermarket white spokes - will likely go 235/75/15 on these as that is the size of the one good wheel which will end up the spare. The tires would be 9.25 in wide, 6.9 in sidewall and 28.9 in diameter when mounted.

Option 2 - 16 in stock steel rims from a Willys Wagon - looking at two tire options here. 235/65/16 will be 9.25 inches wide, 6 inch sidewall and 28 inch diameter, 225/70/16 would be 8.86 in tread width, 6.2 in sidewall and 28.4 in diameter.

I like the stock look and am leaning toward the Willys rims. The backspacing is less than 1 /2 inch shallower than the stock 15 in rim I have. Are there any negatives to running the 16 in rims with either of those tire options?

I'm not sure which size of brakes I have, but the drums are not finned if that helps.

 

I'm not seeing any problem with that combination. You *might* get slight rubbing on the spring on really tight turns but I kind of doubt it. Your brakes are 10" unless someone has upgraded them to 11".

 

Well I went and had a used tire mounted on one of my 16" rims to check the fit on the Commando. I asked for a 225/70/R16 and didn't realize until I got home that it was actually a 225/75/R16. So the sidewall is 6.6 instead of 6.2 and the diameter is 29.29 instead of 28.4. I think it might be a happy acccident though.

The tire fills up the rear wheel well pretty well -



and it still has almost 1.5 inches clearance between the tire and the inner edge of the wheel well.



Looks like decent clearance from the rear leaves



Up front it looks pretty good too





With plenty of clearance from the springs and steering (and gobs of room around the stock drums - maybe I can use these rims if I swap in discs)



I also installed an H78-15 on a stock rim on the right rear just for comparison













You can see it's a slightly smaller tire, but because of the offset difference in the rims (around 3.5 on the 16s and 3.75 on the 15s) and the tire width, it has a little less than 1 inch of clearance from the inside of the rear wheel well.

So it looks like a slightly larger tire than I expected will fit pretty well using the 16 inch rims and still give it an old school/OE sort of look.

Thoughts? Let me know if I'm missing something, otherwise I think I'm going to press ahead with the 225/75s and acccept the higher top speed/better mileage as a bonus.