Technical 6.5j steel rims and all terrain tyres for Panda cross

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Technical 6.5j steel rims and all terrain tyres for Panda cross

The Minotaur

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Hi Guys

I have just joined having recently bought a 2010 Fiat Panda Cross to replace a 2005 Toyota Hilux pickup.

I live half way up a mountain in the Scottish Highlands where winter conditions can be severe and I would like to fit 6.5J or 7J x 15 deep dish steel wheels together with 185/65 R15 all terrain tyres to get me through the winter. So I am hoping that you can give me some advice as to where I can source the wheels and tyres. There are plenty of 6J x 15 steel rims and 185/65 R15 "winter" tyres but I can't seem to find wider rims or proper all terrain tyres.

Any help would be very gratefully received.
Thank you.
Tim
 
Wider tyres might not be as much help as you'd expect. My wife's 1200 Dynamic on the most basic steel wheels and 145 tyres got through last winter far better than most cars. It certainly went places that my 100HP would have never got near.

Check with these guys. https://www.4x4tyres.co.uk/tyres. Their website is a bit iffy but you can chat online.

Tyreleader.co.uk has nothing useful but can be a good source.
 
I was of the opinion that a smaller footprint was better for grip in snowy conditions. Although I have both 13 inch wheels (155/80R13) and 14 inch wheels (165/65R14) for my Multijet Panda, I chose the smaller narrower wheels to use as my Winter wheels. I would have bought Michelin Alpins only Michelin have discontinued making 13 inch tyres, so I have gone back to Continental WinterContacts. I have kept on going past others having problems with grip.
 
Hi Guys

I have just joined having recently bought a 2010 Fiat Panda Cross to replace a 2005 Toyota Hilux pickup.

I live half way up a mountain in the Scottish Highlands where winter conditions can be severe and I would like to fit 6.5J or 7J x 15 deep dish steel wheels together with 185/65 R15 all terrain tyres to get me through the winter. So I am hoping that you can give me some advice as to where I can source the wheels and tyres. There are plenty of 6J x 15 steel rims and 185/65 R15 "winter" tyres but I can't seem to find wider rims or proper all terrain tyres.

Any help would be very gratefully received.
Thank you.
Tim
Congratulations on your new purchase - envy you as I've been hankering after a 4WD but for me it would have to be a MK1. I used to go to school near Auchenblae in the late '50's and we sometimes had to take sledges down to the village for winter supplies! Seriously deep snow! Do keep us updated as to how the Panda fares through the winter won't you?

Now on to tyres/wheels, a subject which I find very interesting. Initially you might think it logical that a nice wide tyre, with lots of tread presenting itself to the road, would be best. Purely in terms of mechanical grip, if the road has a decent surface, is dry, and the vehicle has suspension which can exploit the tyre, then this is true. Introduce water, gravel, mud, snow, etc and the game's up the pole - as they say! With regard to your situation it makes me think of the house we bought when first we returned from the south to Edinburgh. It was in a small village up a steep, long hill, in the hills south of Edinburgh. I had sold my lovely 1500 GT Cortina (Dragoon red!) To help raise the deposit but still needed a car to get into the town where the garage that I worked in was situated. With very little cash and not wanting to take on debt, I found an unloved Citroen Dyane (fitted with the "big" 602cc engine - oooh!) Hiding in the back of a local used car salesroom. No-one wanted it so I got it for sweeties! Anyone familiar with these small Citroen's will know that the tyres, which look like big bike tyres, are 135×15 - very narrow. Anyway the fascinating thing was that as soon as the snow came down in the winter, the only cars which could get up the hill into the village were the local farmers 4×4's, tractors and my Dyane! Everyone else left their cars in the layby at the bottom of the hill. The combination of very good ground clearance, a gutless engine and those super slim tyres ment that the tyres could bite through to the road surface and wheel spin was only a dream! Solid ice was a bit of a problem though. Later we noticed the same thing when my daughter got her first car - a Panda 750. It was on 135×13 tyres and had only slightly more power than the Dyane. Same thing too with good ground clearance, it would go where most others got stuck! Interesting too that ice racers and rally cars when in very slippy conditions run on VERY narrow tyres with lots of studs. They always look rediculously inappropriate under those big wide flared arches!

Nowadays we have a Jazz on 185/55×15 a Punto on 185/60×15 an Ibiza on 185/65×15 (weird size?) and a Panda on 155/80×13. It hasn't snowed since we bought the Panda but the other 3 are "manageable" when it snows and behave really quite well in generally inclemant weather. We also have an Astra on 205/55×16 and a Fabia Scout on 205/40×17 - or maybe they're 215's? (they look like rubber bands - almost no side wall to speak of). In the dry there's no denying that both "hang on" very well indeed. But, in the wet, you really need to be careful. You get used to how well they hang on in the dry and before you know it, when it's wet, you're experiencing a little understeer on roundabouts etc! When there's snow about you really have to watch it! The tyres are just too wide and plane over the top!

I have some experience of winter tyres. They generally have tread patterns which are very good at dispersing water and tread compounds which are soft so more "grippy" on cold wet surfaces and, to some extent, on ice (better than an ordinary, summer, tyre). Well worth considering for road use in winter (but will wear quickly on dry warm roads so not for summer use). Grip in deeper snow and mud depends on the tyre tread pattern's ability to engage with the mud/snow so a bold pattern works best. That is unless the tread gets clogged in which case it's going to spin uselessly anyway! The exception is if you've got something very powerful that can really spin the tyre and throw the mud/snow out of the pattern. For example (and very entertaining to Google) the Icelandic V8 hillclimbers, the American mud bog drag racers, the most powerful "pulling" tractors etc.

I think it's also interesting that both the family cars with the widest tyres suffer wear problems, especially on the inner shoulders and invariably need their track set when new tyres are bought. The others? - not so much. Suspension components wear rates are higher too, but most of all I just don't find them so "nice" to drive in that they both tend to be "jittery" following surface imperfections etc and in the Skoda you feel all the little bumps, due to that skimpy sidewall. Perhaps also worth considering is that they buckled a wheel rim on it last year - big pot hole - but I think a taller sidewall would have just "swallowed" it? Being a wheel only fitted on the Scout model, it wasn't cheap to replace either!

Phew! Went on a bit there didn't I? Still, although there's lots more I could mention, better stop here I think. Hope some of it was useful?
Regards
Jock
 
No I don't think you're too obsessed at all I think the tyres are such an underestimated aspect of our driving pleasure.

I enjoyed the article as well although I agree with you in that it would have been more interesting to see a wider range of wire sizes as I think that article chose a winning size that was a compromise between the sizes available and not necessarily the extremities of sizes available such a skinny vs fat.

I should have put my winter tires on this weekend when I had the chance, looking forward to putting them on and hopefully getting some snow to embarrass the bigger boys
 
Winter tyres down here are a problem because it's almost never cold enough for them to do their stuff so we have to put up with the noise and hardly ever get the benefits. Plus, they wear fast so can be an expensive luxury(?).

Where you do have mud and get regular snow they'll be worth their weight in gold.

PS
Way back in the late 1970s a bloke I knew drove an Austin Marina van. It was slow as slow but he never went above 40 so that didnt matter (unless you were stuck in the queue behind him). All though the very nasty winter of 1981 (when parts of Shropsire saw -25C) he was never once stopped by ice or snow. His nasty narrow crossplies were more than adequate. He got really upset the following spring when his tyres failed the MOT. "But they've only done 40K miles with loads of tread left". Ah yes Iam. just look at the sidewall cracks and between the tread blocks.

He had old fashioned tyres with narrow treads and even narrower gaps between tread blocks, yet he could move when modern rubber was stranded.

Saying all that, I had a VW Splitty van around the same time that also ran on crossplies (previous owner was not keen to "make the modification to radials"). The tyres were new but narrow and tall and they slid about like a skate board. I steered it into side turnings by initiating the turn until the fronts started to slide and power(?) spinning the back wheels and using them like rudders. Thank goodness, I never had to emergency stop the thing.

The Mini 1000 that replaced it was a revelation in handling and grip.
 
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Last winter I road my GL1200 with sidecar through the snow I manged 85 miles before the bike was defeated by a sheet of ice just before the crest of a steep hill where I managed to turn round and find a B&B for the next 2 days.
The point being is the tyres 130/90/16 on the front and 150/80/15 on the rear with 145/10 car tyre on the sidecar are relatively narrow (the rear tyre was end of tread life as well) I was actually passing some of the modern so called SUV 4x4's (some were really terrible as when they lost traction the engine shut down, electronics who would have them !) the best I saw on the road were the obvious, Landrovers etc and Suzuki Jimny's with its narrow wheels and body and my bike and sidecar:).
 
During the 2010 winter snow I was able to get my Punto HGT up a long hill to park it safely at the top. I had no wish to leave it on the main road for some numpty to side into it.

My house was up there with a VERY steep street road down into town so the car was unsafe to move for at least 2 weeks. I attempted to get my housemate's Ford Focus (original shape) up the same hill and got about 5 meters before a wheel was spinning. The HGT's traction control had done an amazing job on ordinary and quite wide tyres.

The big danger with snow and ice is not so much keeping moving but stopping. As said, my car (parked on a hill) was effective stranded until the ice melted.
 
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Thanks to everybody for very useful comments. The reason I was wanting wider tyres is for low ground pressure when I'm working off road (in addition to Highland winter road conditionsI'm a forest ecologist and use my vehicle off road a lot in places where I do not want to damage the ground vegetation.
Tim
 
Hi Guys

I have just joined having recently bought a 2010 Fiat Panda Cross to replace a 2005 Toyota Hilux pickup.

I live half way up a mountain in the Scottish Highlands where winter conditions can be severe and I would like to fit 6.5J or 7J x 15 deep dish steel wheels together with 185/65 R15 all terrain tyres to get me through the winter. So I am hoping that you can give me some advice as to where I can source the wheels and tyres. There are plenty of 6J x 15 steel rims and 185/65 R15 "winter" tyres but I can't seem to find wider rims or proper all terrain tyres.

Any help would be very gratefully received.
Thank you.
Tim
Hi. My Panda 1.1 with stock narrow tyres where amazing in last winter snow I was rubbing front bumper and underside but still kept going:) best car I've ever owned in snow..with these Hancook tyres. The winter before I and many others where having a really hard time leaving Newcastle up to the angle of the north on the A1 I had my old punto with 185s .
I'd try and get some M&S narrow off road tyres if I was you.
I had them on my old Ford Sierra rear wheel drive years ago...amazing:)
 
Thanks to everybody for very useful comments. The reason I was wanting wider tyres is for low ground pressure when I'm working off road (in addition to Highland winter road conditionsI'm a forest ecologist and use my vehicle off road a lot in places where I do not want to damage the ground vegetation.
Tim
Aha! Now that's a very specific requirement. At age 50 I was offered a very attractive early retirement from my full time motor trade activities which I accepted. I still needed to earn some money though so, as I've always had an interest in gardening, I got involved with a squad of learning disabled gardeners. Due to my machine knowledge I quickly found my place as working forman with the grounds maintainance squad where, in addition to the gardening duties I also maintained and repaired the lawn mowers (including a large Ferris ride on powered by a big G twin Briggs. Sounded wonderful when pulling hard on long grass - Harley fantasy!) cultivator, several strimmers, leaf blowers, etc. So I know a bit about moving machinery around on Turf and Soil whilst causing the minimum of crushing and compacting.

There are some quite specialist tyres available for horticultural machinery and I've had some quite interesting conversations over the years at events like the Royal Highland Show. Wide, soft, but not too aggressive, treads. Soft "balloon" type sidewalls which can deflect easily. These tyres are not going to be available in sizes to fit car wheels - and would not be legal for road use anyway - but it would suggest that large flexible constructions are what to aim for. I think it's likely that a winter compound tyre in a high aspect ratio (is 80% or similar) and as wide as possible will give an economically affordable solution for summer use in the forests? When the snow and ice come though a wide tyre is not going to be so good?

As a shot in the dark, why not try talking to a supplier of rally tyres (Google it). There are many options for different conditions. Of course their objective is very different to yours but there could be a compromise?

Mrs Jock just put my tea tray on my lap. Spicy bean burgers and baked beans! Yum yum! So, got to go now. Good luck with it all. Do let us know if you find a particularly interesting solution, won't you?
Regards
Jock
 
This was a quick google result so you'll need to do your own checks but how about having the basic 13" Panda wheels banded? It's unlikely you will get any Fiat spec wheels in a smaller size.

http://www.alonzecustom.co.uk/steel-wheel-banding.php

The issue will be maintaining the correct steering geometry while not compromising the steering lock. Are the 4x4 forums worth looking at?
 
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When Mrs Jock brought my tea last night she upset my train of thought. (The spicy bean burgers were delicious! But I'm wondering, this morning, if accompanying it with baked beans was just a few beans too many!?) Anyway here's some thoughts on what I meant to say last night and on banded wheels

Most of the horticultural tyres which are used on lawns etc run low pressures. The most any of mine used was 25lbs/sq in. And the rest were lower. When I worked in the country garage, south of Edinburgh, there were often recoveries to be done in snowy conditions (in the winter) and one of the handy tips I was given was that if traction was difficult to let air out of the Land Rover's tyres 'till the sidewalls were bulging noticeably.(our tow vehicle was a Land Rover pickup) I never had the need to do this but did use it, once, many years later in my own car on a beach and it worked well. Letting the pressure down substantially will, of course, greatly increase the footprint of the tyre and let it deform to imperfections in the surface. Don't drive at speed or for any great distance until you've reinflated to the correct pressure because it is, I think, illegal? to run on a nearly flat tyre and, of course, very bad for the tyre!

Dave, I ran my Cortina on 5.5j rims (same wheel that the Lotus Version ran). A chap I knew at that time had a very similar car but whereas I ran a standard 1500 GT engine he tuned his (twin side draught Webber's - lovely noise, A2 cam, big valve head, etc) it was considerably faster than mine, probably faster than a Lotus. He lowered the suspension by about the same amount as the Lotus and also fitted banded wheels - somewhere around 7, or maybe 7.5j's - it looked really aggressive but he had big problems trying to balance them and the car was very "nervous" to drive, following joints in the tarmac, and moving around a lot under heavy braking. It could leave me standing on country roads but it was horrid to drive!
 
Hi Guys

I have just joined having recently bought a 2010 Fiat Panda Cross to replace a 2005 Toyota Hilux pickup.

I live half way up a mountain in the Scottish Highlands where winter conditions can be severe and I would like to fit 6.5J or 7J x 15 deep dish steel wheels together with 185/65 R15 all terrain tyres to get me through the winter. So I am hoping that you can give me some advice as to where I can source the wheels and tyres. There are plenty of 6J x 15 steel rims and 185/65 R15 "winter" tyres but I can't seem to find wider rims or proper all terrain tyres.

Any help would be very gratefully received.
Thank you.
Tim
Strangely I also have a Panda Cross (2009) and a Toyota Hilux and I live half way up a mountain, but in the Lake District. I run Dunlop Winter Response 2’s on the standard Cross wheels and throughout all of the snow last winter, the only time I had any issues was when the snow was so deep that the car would act like a sledge and ride up, lifting all 4 wheels off the snow. I’ve used Nokian and now the Dunlop’s and can’t see any reason to go up in wheel size. I also run the winter Tyres all year without issues. Hope that helps!!
 
... banded wheels - somewhere around 7, or maybe 7.5j's - it looked really aggressive but he had big problems trying to balance them and the car was very "nervous" to drive, following joints in the tarmac, and moving around a lot under heavy braking. It could leave me standing on country roads but it was horrid to drive!

Hence my comment about steering geometry. :)


Simply making a wheel wider on the outside might look cool but the steering will suffer (at the least) increased bump-steer and quite possibly a nasty left-right flutter at around 40mph. That's the speed where all (road spec) systems get a lateral flutter as the castor interacts with the tyres gyro effect. It's like a wobbly wheel on a Tesco trolley but a lot more "exciting".

But if your off road Panda needs wider wheels this might be the only option.
 
Do you have the cash to have an off road Panda set up for the purpose and another Panda for predominantly road use? Swapping the wheels on and off every day will soon get tyresome. SP ;)
 
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