Thread: Thoughts on wheels.

Originally Posted by rick130

It's funny Ian, the way I'm driving the Disco atm I'm almost tempted to try a set of 18's!

Fancy a quick trip to rural SEQ to thaw out (looking at a max of 31 today)? Then we could swap your 16" alloys for my 18" 'pimp' wheels. Not keen on going back to P construction though. When we first got Daphne 1, we put a set of Toyo OPATs on her. They were only available in P types in that size back then. Over the next two years we 'broke' five of them with rock fractures in western Qld and Central Oz. Then went to the BFG LTs and, touch wood (he says, scratching his head...), not one tyre failure - just the odd puncture on the bitumen, usually roofing screws.

Originally Posted by rick130

I think I need anther one with a bent 8, six speed Quaife dog 'box, ATB's all round, lower it, 20"rims....

Would the old Jaguar 5.3 V12 fit, do you think??

Originally Posted by rick130

Re smaller diameter ARB's, someone could custom make them but what I'll be doing at some point down the track (read: next year at least) is making some remote releases for the existing ones, either mechanical or hydraulic.
Hopefully the car will be nicer on roughish dirt and hopefully more composed/better articulation off road.

Remember seeing one of these on (I think) a GQ Ti Patrol. Would you have any links to a description of how these work? Once you have perfected your prototype, I'd like to offer to beta test the second version. No charge.

Hahaha, is supposed to peak at 23° here today!
And plunge to 12° on Thursday.....

Interesting experience re the Toyo's.
My Disco had P construction Toyo's before the current GT's and they all went egg shaped.
It was used all around Central Australia but driven sympathetically. (not my me! )
The GT's surprised me at how they held up on the trip back, I was quite prepared that I would trash a couple, but it hasn't happened yet.

Yep, some GQ's had a mechanical release on the rear ARB drop link and it worked.
I can't recall atm how the mechanism worked though.

Originally Posted by rick130

Interesting experience re the Toyo's.
My Disco had P construction Toyo's before the current GT's and they all went egg shaped.

We spent about a year in Alice in the early 2000s and three or four of the replacements came from the Alice Springs Tyrepower branch. They were amazed that we were having so much trouble with the P construction OPATs, as they well selling a lot of LT OPATs to the Tanami gold mine who loved them and had no problems. Must be a big difference between P and LT construction, especially with the Toyos. They recommended we let them down to 26 - 28 psi on gravel/gibber roads which we did, but they still failed on a semi-regular basis. (And it was a pain to have to pump them back up again if you had a few hundred km of bitumen to cover on the way home.)

I went for the Toyos at the time as my Dad had used them for years on his milk trucks (remember a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away - when the milkman delivered fresh milk direct to your door...?) - and they were tough, long lasting tyres.