In response to " What's your ground clearance now with your mods? And which tires do you use for offroading?"
With regard to the modifications, the tyres have been by far the simplest. The Outtie came with 215/60 R16 street tyres, which I found to be great on road, but terrible on the rough stuff.
So once I had used up the first set, which I have to say lasted well at 88000K’s I decided to try some light truck all terrain rubber. I looked around, and not wanting to go to the expense of full-on BF Goodrich’s or Coopers (just in case the difference wasn’t worth it) I settled on a set of Kumho AT 825 215/70 R16’s.
What a difference! In places (off-road) where I used to scrape, or bottom out I no longer had to worry about underbody damage. The difference in overall diameter is 43mm, so the total “lift” that I managed was just under an inch, at 21.5mm. This may not seem enough to make a difference, but it does.
The biggest change I suppose is that conventional street rubber sidewalls tend to not be anywhere as stiff as the light truck sidewalls. This means that when banging around on rocks, sand, gravel, & mud the tyre doesn’t “squash” or compress as much, so the clearance increase remains.
Combine the “lift” with far superior traction off-road, and it feels like a totally different vehicle. Climbing steep rocky slopes with the street rubber was a hit & miss affair. More often that not I would have to carefully pick a line, then floor it. A lot of wheel spin, and sliding around – not the most comfortable feeling with steep drop-offs either side of a track!
The AT’s make the vehicle so much more secure on rough tracks. Now I am able to climb slopes that I wouldn’t have even bothered trying on the old rubber. No more giving it heaps of revs to climb either, I can literally crawl up steep rocky inclines with traction to burn!
The major drawback with the larger tyres though is that the gearing is a bit messed up at very low speeds. The car was never a rocket ship anyway, (nearly 2 tonnes of fully loaded car, and 105Kw/210nM) fast take-offs at the lights were never much of an option. The only problem now is that it is just that little bit slower again. To get a decent rush from the lights, now you need an even bigger stab at the go pedal! That said, highway cruising is better, as I have about 2500rpm at 100Km now, as opposed to about 2700 with original sized rubber.
This trade off is more than acceptable, as I tend to do mostly long distance highway driving during the week for work, then off-road fun on weekends. The embedded photo shows the limit of tyre adhesion on sandy slopes - 39 degrees downhill, parking brake engaged - slowly sliding on the rubber!)
So if you are looking for some better non-bitumen fun for your Outtie, definitely invest in some all terrain tyres. (My next mod, given savings & spouse approval is a 1” lift kit using new shocks & springs. Any more than this extra inch and the suspension geometry gets all messed up apparently! That will mean about two inches more than stock – which should prove better again!!!)
So in answer to your original question after all this info, ground clearance at lowest point is now 241.5mm. This is up from 205mm from original. (as a side note - the new 2007 Pajero has a lowest clearance measurement of 205mm!) Thumbnail Image
