General wider wheels?

[petebarchetta]

anyone ever fitted wheels wider than the standard panda arches?
if so hVE rch extensions been fitted? bought from????
reason i ask is that i have a set of 13x7 superlights with 185 wide tyres from my old panda (see pandamonium) for look

 

[Boanerges]

Hi, I am thinking of the same for mine. Got a 2wd Dynamic but it has the awful 155/80 R 13 wheels and tyres which look terrible and in my opinion give no grip at all. They are barely wider than supermarket trolley castors, the contact patch is pathetic. In the dry they lose grip fast, in the snow even worse.
I think being 80 profile they make the ride too 'bouncy' - I know it's softly sprung to start with but some kind of roadholding would be nice.
I know you can go up to 14 inch, 6 by 14 or even 15 inch using 185/60 by 14 or 195/50 by 15 tyres and keep the same rolling ratio so your speedo isn't out.
I am researching alloys - Fiat want £360 for official 14 inch ones that come on the Eleganza if you walk into the showroom and buy them as accessories! Then there is cost of tyres.
Not sure if anyone knows if alloys off the Mk11 Punto will fit the new Panda?
There are loads on Ebay, they should be the same stud diameter then no problems.
Are you on the standard tyres and rims, how do you find them?

 

[Mix_]

Hi, I am thinking of the same for mine. Got a 2wd Dynamic but it has the awful 155/80 R 13 wheels and tyres which look terrible and in my opinion give no grip at all. They are barely wider than supermarket trolley castors, the contact patch is pathetic. In the dry they lose grip fast, in the snow even worse.
I think being 80 profile they make the ride too 'bouncy' - I know it's softly sprung to start with but some kind of roadholding would be nice.
I know you can go up to 14 inch, 6 by 14 or even 15 inch using 185/60 by 14 or 195/50 by 15 tyres and keep the same rolling ratio so your speedo isn't out.
I am researching alloys - Fiat want £360 for official 14 inch ones that come on the Eleganza if you walk into the showroom and buy them as accessories! Then there is cost of tyres.
Not sure if anyone knows if alloys off the Mk11 Punto will fit the new Panda?
There are loads on Ebay, they should be the same stud diameter then no problems.
Are you on the standard tyres and rims, how do you find them?

Just my 2 cents: in snow - the wider the tyres, the worser the grip. You don' t need a contact patch, what you need, is brute force kg/in2.... The reason for that is, that there allways is a layer of snow, and beyound them - the hard layer of icy_treated asphalt. You' re actually riding on the deeper layer, and the main reason for being slipery is low friction between the two' s layers. If you have wide tyres, you simply can' t get trougth to the hard layer and allways are "skiing"" on the front layer. Mega_wide is for asphalt.
But, ofc - there is anyway good and not so good tyres in any of widths avaible.

 

[ninehours]

I have been thinking of buying bigger alloys for my 4x4 to use for summer driving and then put the existing wheels back on for winter. Does anyone know how big you can go and how the fuel economy' top speed and acceleration will be affected and if the speedometer will also be affected.

 

[petebarchetta]

panda rally has 7x16's on it, but i think the suspension is a tad hard
anyone know what brand of springs the used or shocks?

 

[Boanerges]

I found a useful website with loads of information on tyres, their construction and working out different wheel and tyre combinations to make sure the original speedo is not affected (rolling radius I think is the technical term).
It is at http://www.carbibles.com and look for the tyre section. There is a java programme where you insert current wheel and tyre combination and can calculate the larger sizes to ensure the speedometer isn't affected. 155/80R13 is the same as 165/65R14 or 185/60R14 or 195/50/15 but not sure about M&Snow tyres which have larger profiles generally.