Preparing the Baja 96 for next month’s Gambler 500 meant getting the all terrain tires mounted. Why not put them on the 95 in the meantime?
The 155/80 R15 tires on the 95 were replaced by the 195/80 R15 tires. The guy at the tire place wasn’t sure they would fit, so we tested with one wheel first, and he was pretty surprised. The partially skirted fenders on the 95 make it look like the wheels can’t possibly fit in the wheel wells, but they do.
The 155's are about 25" tall, these all terrains are just a hair over 27" tall, so the car gets an extra inch of ground clearance from them. The stock bias ply tires were around 26" tall, so the car can actually handle the extra height easily.
Pretty chunky looking! Car handles like a bouncy castle now, and alarmingly oversteer comes in at much gentler speeds (with the smaller tires you have to really be going much too fast for common sense to trigger oversteer). While I think the car looks pretty funny, I’m glad these will be going on the other car soon enough and the daily will be going back to stock sized tires.