Off road with 20" wheels

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stangrp

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Dec 20, 2018
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Middelburg
Hi, My GL 350CDI has 275/55 R20 wheels, we are going to Namibia in 2019 and will require tyres to be deflated in some areas, does anybody have experience of deflating the 20" tyres or should I consider installing 18" with 265/60 R18 tyres
 
I have not own 20” wheels before, but 18” wheels will always be a benefit in any offroad situation ( if it will fit?)
 
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I had BFG 20" in my GL, went to Nam and had no problem in the dunes with deflating

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stangrp said:
Hi, My GL 350CDI has 275/55 R20 wheels, we are going to Namibia in 2019 and will require tyres to be deflated in some areas, does anybody have experience of deflating the 20" tyres or should I consider installing 18" with 265/60 R18 tyres
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I swopped mine for 17" rims. I do a lot of off-road with 265x65 tyres. Great flotation and still excellent and predictable on-road roadholding.
 
I doubt if 18" mags will fit on the GL. I tried fitting a set, and they would not go over the front calipers & disk.
Smallest diameter that you can use is 19" However the choice of tyres is limited. For this reason I fitted the 20"
 
What spare are you using with the 275/55- 20 ?. The emergency standard spare that comes with car is 4 % smaller in diameter than the 275/55-20 so cannot be used for any distance and I'm sure the wheel sensors will complain
 
Pete460332 said:
What spare are you using with the 275/55- 20 ?. The emergency standard spare that comes with car is 4 % smaller in diameter than the 275/55-20 so cannot be used for any distance and I'm sure the wheel sensors will complain
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Hi, Thanks for your response, My GL has a space saver which doesn't mean much in an off road wheel emergency, my plan was to put smaller rims on but smallest rim size on the GL cis a 19" due to the large disks. After fitting new Pirrelli scorpion + tyres I decided to go without an extra full size wheel and for the first time in all my offroad trips (approximately 100 000 km's) I had a puncture on the road out of Sesriem (C21 I think) a stone or something slashed the tyre in the tread and we managed to get back to Sesriem and installed a garter, the mechanic could only guarantee a couple of hundred Km's and eventually I managed just over 4000km's before I finally got a 2nd hand 20" to get me home. Lesson learnt, never travel in far off places without extra wheels. If I had a conventional size 17" wheel I could have got tyres in virtually every town but not a 20"
As for feedback on deflating the tyres, I dropped them to 1.2 Bar and no issues in sand
 
What are you doing about storing the full size spare? Do you think it could fit deflated in the current spare position? I have managed to find a used spare 20" rim and have put a tire on it so have 5 wheels.

I just bought a 2010 - GL 500 and also put on 275/55/r20 Pirelli Scorpion ATR+. Any feedback on these? Seem to get good reviews.
 
munga said:
What are you doing about storing the full size spare? Do you think it could fit deflated in the current spare position? I have managed to find a used spare 20" rim and have put a tire on it so have 5 wheels.

I just bought a 2010 - GL 500 and also put on 275/55/r20 Pirelli Scorpion ATR+. Any feedback on these? Seem to get good reviews.
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To the question of what I will do with a full size spare, the plan for our next trip is to install my roof rack and place wheels / tyres on the roof, alternately my off road trailer will take at least 1 tyre on the roof.
Feedback on the Pirelli Scorpion AT +, apart from the puncture (and it was rear left) I was happy with the tyres, I also do a lot of tar road driving and towing a Jurgens Classique caravan I have found the tyre to be fairly quite on tar
 
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