T6.1 new to camper life

[Miket01]

Hi Am a complete newbie to this and have a T30 6.1 arriving this week for conversion. Just a quick question - what size wheels and tyres are best? Friend has 20 inch which look cool but am worried about ride quality and wheel arch scraping. Also are solar panels worth fitting to the pop top?
thanks

 

[Big Al]

We have 20`s on 275/40 tyres and have the van lowered on better suspension and to be honest, its crashy on pot holes / poor road surfaces. I had specified 245/45 but the converter must have thought better! The tyres do rub the wheel arch liner too. Just my opinion, some people note and improvement?

 

[russ_e]

I've stuck with 18's - Tyres are cheaper and there is no rubbing etc. Everyone has their own opinion on wheel size so it's a personal choice really.

If you are going off grid for a week or so, it might be worth investing in solar. Depends on what you think you might need and what is going in your conversion. A decent leisure a battery might be enough.

Good luck with the conversion! Be prepared to spend twice as much as you originally thought!!

 

[A Bridge Too Far]

Ours came lowered on B14s with 20 inch alloys, drove brilliantly on smooth roads.... but we live in a rural county. So when the tyres came up for renewal we swapped to 18 inch steels and got the wheels and tyres for the same price as decent tyres on the 20's. It depends on the look your going for the black gloss painted steels look better than the 20's in my opinion. We got ours from Stitches and Steel who were a similar price to Tamar Wheels and one other place with this style, but S+S had them in stock and were extremely helpful when I spoke to them so they got the sale.

We also have a solar panel, but only have a small single leisure battery. We find it much more benficila in hot humid weather as the fridge is working harder. the only other thing is lighting and we only use that when needed and have all LED so doesn't use much. If it was me I'd get the solar and upgrade to twin decent leisure batteries if you plan to be off grid for more than a couple of nights and put a bettery monitor on them so you can make sure they don't drop too low as their life will be severely effected even by a few discharges. (you can search on this using the bar at the top there's loads of info in the forum).

 

[Miket01]

Thanks for the info guys. Will re mortgage the house and look forward to a life on wheels!

 

[A Bridge Too Far]

Thanks for the info guys. Will re mortgage the house and look forward to a life on wheels!

Forgot to mention, the noise reduction and the ride quality was massively better on the 18's. Like a new van.