I know that this is probably not relevant to most of you, as you guys seem to mostly keep them to roads, but I have just fitted some slightly "off-road" tyres to my Ace.

The tyres are 205/70x15.
The rims are off a Suzuki Sierra (Samurai in the US not sure what they were called in England?)

The stud pattern is perfect, the off-set is slightly different, but fits with no real problems.

On turning the tyres foul the little eyelet thingy that hangs back from the front bottom corner of the front wheel arch, but a few well placed touches with a friendly hammer have fixed that.
There is a slight rubbing of the tyres on the mudflaps when turning in reverse, but not a problem, and not in normal forward driving.

The tyres meet all the requirements of Australian laws in relation to this vehicle.

For reference, mine is a 1990 MasterAce Surf.

I have no suspension mods and it currently rides at normal height!

- (#12986) DaveW, 24 Aug 04 08:50

Dave

If clearance is that tight don't you get problems off road when the front drops after hitting large holes or something?

As for the 'eyelet' thingy. That was responsible for giving me a large gash on the head when working on the hubs recently. Good job it was a plastic headed hammer I had to hand and not a club hammer otherwise I could have done some serious damage to the door frame when I vented my wrath on it!

- (#12986) Ian Dunse (Derbs), 25 Aug 04 01:20

Ian - with actual structure under there, once you clear the front eyelet thingy the wheel has room to move up and down.
I am considering removing the mudflaps though as there seems to be no easy way to clear them.
As it is there is only a small amount of fouling under suspension compression there right now.

The rubbing is only at those points where the wheel is turned and comes closest to the guards.

I will probably get the suspension lifted one inch at the front sometime soon and that will take care of it in all but the most extreme situations, and let's face it - even those of us who do actually off road them are not looking to climb cliffs!

I haven't actually had the chance to off-road it since I fitted them so I don't know exactly how much if any more rubbing will happen.

Just to let the skepticts know though - the reason I bought these was because we needed new tyres and these came up (Wheels and tyres!) for the same price as the 205/70x14 road tyres I was looking at.
Researching in a few other places told me that these would fit with no problems - not quite correct, but with few problems.

The van has gained about 3/4 of an inch in clearance though, which will be welcome. That along with the slightly larger rolling diameter will increase the ability of the van a little bit.

It still drives nicely by the way, and because they are not aggressive off-roaders, they are not any noisier than the normal tyres.
- (#12986) DaveW, 25 Aug 04 09:31

Update Ian - I spent about an hour playing in a pine forest today and didn't hear any scraping from the tyres.
I have tinkered a little bit since my last post and tapped here and there and it now seems sorted.

There is no visible modification from outside - you actually have to get down on yoru hands and knees and look inside the guard - and then you would only notice it if you really knew what it was supposed to look like under there.

I did however find out that the mud flaps do a really good job - you should have seen the mud up the side of the van behind the front wheels! ;^), but the behind the rears was clean!

- (#12986) DaveW, 6 Sep 04 10:28

Well if it's any consolation, my sills and side door bottom get regularly covered in cow sh*t when I drive over the country roads near me so you probably aren't missing that much.

- (#12986) Ian Dunse (Derbs), 7 Sep 04 01:14