Delica Canada | Mitsubishi Van Club

I'm in the process with Sean from Zen Autoworks to import a 1994 l400 spacegear and was wondering if anybody new what the OEM tire size was?

Cheers,

aclarker wrote:I'm in the process with Sean from Zen Autoworks to import a 1994 l400 spacegear and was wondering if anybody new what the OEM tire size was?

Cheers,

225/80/15..

If like us over here in the UK you struggle to get that size we tend to run 235/75r15 or 30x9.5r15 here.

My GPS tells me I am going 10% faster than I actually am eg 55 when I am only doing 50mph

I'm running 31x10.5x15 and had to do some fender trimming along with a 3" lift. GPS is says I'm doing 106 km/h while the speed says 100 km/h.

237/75/15 is a good size for the stock L400.

This chart should help.
http://www.1010tires.com/TireSizeCalcul ... ion=submit
I'm running LT235/75R15 on my L400 and they're just fine. This should mean four more tire revolutions per KM and speedo should only be off by one notch at 100 kmh.
This chart is good too:
http://www.tacomaworld.com/forum/tirecalc.php

chrisfoster1971 wrote:If like us over here in the UK you struggle to get that size we tend to run 235/75r15 or 30x9.5r15 here.

My GPS tells me I am going 10% faster than I actually am eg 55 when I am only doing 50mph

With the 30x9.5r15, is there any trimming involved or lift necessary to avoid rubbing?

You may need to remove the front mud flaps to get 30x9.5's to fit on a stock height L400.

I have 265 70/R15 on my l400, they are not much taller than the 235's, but they look nice and wide. I still have te factory mud flaps, andno rubbing.
Jason

What is the stock rim width?

7"

Well this is kind'a strange... I was on the highway yesterday and passed by an unmanned radar speed display set-up... one of those public awareness things. It said I was doing 77 kph while my speedometer read around 83. I passed by another one later & got the same thing.

My understanding was that my LT 235/75 R15 tires were a little bit larger than the stock 225/80R15 and should therefore give me a little more speed than indicated on the dash - not less. Evidently it's the wrong way around and I'm puzzled as to how this could be. This helps explain why I often get the feeling that I'm driving slower than those around me even though the speedo says I'm fine and also why my fuel consumption is not so marvelous.

So maybe next time I should try some 265/70/15's.

We have a series 1 L400 with 235 75 r 15

In Australia they are a very common size and price range are reasonable.

I have a Mazda Bravo with the 265 70 r 15

My choice is limited and the price is anything up to 100% dearer depending on brand.

The Delica drives very well with the 235's and no mods.

Choice is yours and depends on your avaliablity.

regards fmande

While I can't speak to tire size on this one, keep in mind that pretty much all vehicles from the factory have the speedometer set high. As far as I can tell this is so that you can't sue the manufacturer when you get a speeding ticket (if you get nailed doing 110, odds are your speedometer was saying 115-120 so you have no excuse!)
Now it depends on the vehicle as to how much out it is. modern computer controlled ones seem to be precise enough that they only set it out by about 2-3kph, but many of the older ones are closer to 8-10, (my old benz was 10, my L300 was 12, my L400 is about 7, my work truck is about 2 and my old work van was about 2-3 as well (both work vehicles were completely computer controlled, and in fact in the diagnostic mode on the dash it would tell you what it really thought you were doing (2 higher than the speedometer showed))

(it's really easy to get a feel for it if you have a GPS in the vehicle)

To see what effect your tires are having it is more important to look at your odometer than your speedometer, there are frequently "odometer test sections" signed on the side of the road, these will let you see roughly how accurate your odometer reads, this is a better indication of what your tires are doing, because despite speedometers reading intentionally high from the factory, odometers are set as close to accurate as they can be.

Once you know how far out your odometer is (not your speedometer) you can see how much better/worse your fuel economy is from what you think it is when you calculate it...

jfarsang wrote:You may need to remove the front mud flaps to get 30x9.5's to fit on a stock height L400.

I don't think so. These tyres are larger than my 235/75R15s by maybe half an inch diameter.
Falco.

Green1 wrote:While I can't speak to tire size on this one, keep in mind that pretty much all vehicles from the factory have the speedometer set high. As far as I can tell this is so that you can't sue the manufacturer when you get a speeding ticket (if you get nailed doing 110, odds are your speedometer was saying 115-120 so you have no excuse!)

Now it depends on the vehicle as to how much out it is. modern computer controlled ones seem to be precise enough that they only set it out by about 2-3kph, but many of the older ones are closer to 8-10, (my old benz was 10, my L300 was 12, my L400 is about 7, my work truck is about 2 and my old work van was about 2-3 as well (both work vehicles were completely computer controlled, and in fact in the diagnostic mode on the dash it would tell you what it really thought you were doing (2 higher than the speedometer showed))

Wow, that's interesting. So then if a guy knew exactly how much off his speedo was with any given tire, he could conceivably calculate which size would net an accurate (or more accurate) reading.

Green1 wrote:(it's really easy to get a feel for it if you have a GPS in the vehicle)

I do have GPS but unfortunately, haven't been able to get certain functions from it; such as anything mileage or fuel consumption related. (The thing won't even accept my cell's phone book.)

Green1 wrote:To see what effect your tires are having it is more important to look at your odometer than your speedometer, there are frequently "odometer test sections" signed on the side of the road, these will let you see roughly how accurate your odometer reads, this is a better indication of what your tires are doing, because despite speedometers reading intentionally high from the factory, odometers are set as close to accurate as they can be.

Once you know how far out your odometer is (not your speedometer) you can see how much better/worse your fuel economy is from what you think it is when you calculate it...

That's a good idea too; something for a road trip...if I can wait that long. The sign post info could also be factored in to calculate a better tire size. What I've been doing so far is checking fuel consumption against the odo reading which, as you suggest, is probably about as unreliable as the consumption is un-impressive. Fixing teh tire size should fix the fuel consumption. And once I do that I'll have a better idea of how well the drive train's working... and I suspect it's actually working very well.
C'est la vie... guess I'll be shopping for new tires a bit sooner than I'd planned.