One for the tyre experts...again

[MOGS]

Morning people,

Anyone know if I can swap the wheels from my '90 maestro onto my '86 Montego while the Maestro is off the road for resto? That way I can save the wear on the metric tyres on the Monty.

If so, will it put the speedo out? I have absolutely no idea on how to interpret tyre sizes BTW!! :giveup:

[D87 SMW]

Morning people,

Anyone know if I can swap the wheels from my '90 maestro onto my '86 Montego while the Maestro is off the road for resto? That way I can save the wear on the metric tyres on the Monty.

If so, will it put the speedo out? I have absolutely no idea on how to interpret tyre sizes BTW!! :giveup:

Morning,


I presume you mean the MG Maestro, they should fit the Monty no problem. (I have MG Monty wheels on my MG Maestro)

What model is the Montego? If it's an MG you should have no problems. If it's an Austin, the wheels will be slightly bigger, but that should compensate for the standard over-reading of the speedo. (well near enough)

HTH

[MOGS]

Morning,


I presume you mean the MG Maestro, they should fit the Monty no problem. (I have MG Monty wheels on my MG Maestro)

What model is the Montego? If it's an MG you should have no problems. If it's an Austin, the wheels will be slightly bigger, but that should compensate for the standard over-reading of the speedo. (well near enough)

HTH

Sorry, I should have said.

The Maestro is a 2.0 EFI and the Monty is a 2.0 Turbo (Both MG)

[E_T_V]

It should be fine. If you really want to be sure who much if at all the speedo will change measure the perimeter of each of the tyres with a tape measure and compare them. You'll probably find there is at most 5% difference between them.

[MOGS]

Many thanks for that. Will check the diamaters tonight, although the Monty ones look much bigger, it could just be an optical illusion because of the different wheel styles.

[E_T_V]

If they are both MG's then I think the tyre circumference will be identical.

[Ed Gasket]

Wouldn't the insurance company make a fuss if there was a claim and it transpired that non-standard wheels had been fitted? I've heard that even if you fit alloys and don't tell them, they won't pay out.
On another tyre issue, does anyone know whether the 185/65 R14 tyres fitted to later montegos can be fitted to wheels from an early montego that currently have the metric tyres (185/65 R365) fitted? The reason I ask is that I have some old montego wheels with worn out metric tyres and was wondering whether the later non-metric tyres would fit.

[tony]

you should tell your insurance everything,even if you just change your gearknob for a aftermarket one , tell them .
you cannot put none metric tyres onto metric rims .late wheel/tyres will fit to early cars with no problems tho ;)

[Beaker]

Wouldn't the insurance company make a fuss if there was a claim and it transpired that non-standard wheels had been fitted? I've heard that even if you fit alloys and don't tell them, they won't pay out.

If it is aftermarket alloys you should tell your insurance company, if it is standard Maestro/Montego alloys I wouldn't say anything, as for all intense of purposes they could have been fitted on the car as a customer option when it left the factory.

[e692wtt]

On another tyre issue, does anyone know whether the 185/65 R14 tyres fitted to later montegos can be fitted to wheels from an early montego that currently have the metric tyres (185/65 R365) fitted? The reason I ask is that I have some old montego wheels with worn out metric tyres and was wondering whether the later non-metric tyres would fit.

As Tony said above, No - but I think it is because of major differences in the shape of the wheel rim and the tyre beading, as opposed to the dimensions being much different.

The 'metric' tyre/wheel system was designed as a safety system, in that if the tyre deflates it won't come off the rim and so it is easier to maintain control of the car than with 'normal' wheels and tyres. It was a great idea that wasn't adopted by most of the Car Industry (although Citroen fitted a similar scheme to their CX and Jaguar fitted the same to some of their models, at around the same time too) due to costs.


There's a place in Lockerbie that had metric remould tyres for sale about 18 months ago though, a search of the Forums (for Lockerbie) will find you the details...

[MOGS]

Wouldn't the insurance company make a fuss if there was a claim and it transpired that non-standard wheels had been fitted? I've heard that even if you fit alloys and don't tell them, they won't pay out.
On another tyre issue, does anyone know whether the 185/65 R14 tyres fitted to later montegos can be fitted to wheels from an early montego that currently have the metric tyres (185/65 R365) fitted? The reason I ask is that I have some old montego wheels with worn out metric tyres and was wondering whether the later non-metric tyres would fit.

What if you got hold of a set of non-metric WHEELS complete with tyres and put those on an older car? Would that work?

[E_T_V]

Yes non metric alloys from other montys and maestros fit happily on the hubs of the early cars which originally had metric tyres/wheels.

[MOGS]

Yes non metric alloys from other montys and maestros fit happily on the hubs of the early cars which originally had metric tyres/wheels.

Doesn't the smaller tyre size of the maestro affect the speedo on the monty though? I'm thinking in terms of both being the MG version here...maestro efi and monty turbo.

Can you put bigger tyres on the maesty wheels to compensate? If so, what size would you recommend?

[E_T_V]

I think both tyres are the same size, just the monty ones are usually a bit wider.

There are some tyre size calculators on the web that can tell you the effects of using different tyre sizes on the speedo readings. Try this one
http://www.miata.net/garage/tirecalc.html

[tony]

i belive there is a 13mm differnce between the size of the hole on a metric tyre to a normal tyre. does anyone else help?

[E_T_V]

i belive there is a 13mm differnce between the size of the hole on a metric tyre to a normal tyre. does anyone else help?

You have holes on your metric tyres? Now that is where you are going wrong :laugh:

Stick a tape measure round the circumference of both wheels and see what the difference is. I don't think it will be much at all.

[Ed Gasket]

The later montego wheels with 185/65 R14 tyres can be fitted to earlier montegos; as can the earlier metric montego wheels and their respective tyres, be fitted to later montegos. So the montego wheels complete with tyres can be interchanged; no problem. I don't know about the Maestro wheels though someone commented that they are slimmer than the Monty wheels; if this is the case then although they may well fit, I wouldn't do it as the insurance company would certainly kick up a fuss if there was a claim and they found out that undersized tyres had been fitted; not worth the risk in my opinion.