Hi I run my  vanagon syncro 86 with stock 14" steel rims, BF Goodrich All
terrain 27x8.5x14, and no problems, very good performance in off road trails
an highway, i live in Baja California Mexico.

A few weeks a go put in my syncro aprox 9000 km in a trip to Michoacan an
Mexico DF, this tires are fabulous,  the van looks like military vehicule
but is fine to me. I run this distance withhout extra tire.

Ramon Celaya
Syncro 86
Weekender 87 1.8 jetta powered

on 7/16/03 1:28 PM, mark drillock at drillock@EARTHLINK.NET wrote:

> In my experience on a heavily loaded Syncro Camper, stock Audi Turbo
> alloy wheels are quite strong. I found them much more durable than the
> stock Vanagon alloys. The Vanagon alloys chip, crack, dent, and bend so
> badly that they drag on the brake calipers. My Audi alloys suffered no
> such damage ever even though they were driven on the same roads and with
> even heavier loads. The Audis saw thousands of potholes each, tens of
> thousands of miles of bad Mexican roads with no damage. The VW alloys
> they replaced failed often. I even moved the VW alloys to a lighter
> passenger Vanagon that friends drove along on some of my Baja trips but
> they continued to suffered damage even then to my disgust.
>
> I gave away the remains of my last set of trashed Vanagon 14" alloys as
> I considered them all but useless for hard-core Baja excursions. Driven
> slowly (some might say normally) they are fine.
>
> I never had a problem with stock steel rims though, just the VW 14"
> alloys. I switched to the 14" alloys because they are a little wider and
> within the tire company specs for width in oversize 14" tires while the
> steels were not. 27x8.5x14 load C tires properly inflated. The tires
> were not ruined, just the rims.
>
> Mark
>
> David Brodbeck wrote:
>>
>>
>> I don't buy it.  Steel wheels are tremendously strong and I've never seen
>> one fail, on any vehicle...by contrast, alloy wheels get bent by potholes
>> here all the time, and there are stories of pieces of the rim exploding
>> off while tire shop personnel tried to mount tires on them.  At at least
>> one shop they use a thick plywood shield while putting tires on alloy
>> rims, for that reason -- over-pressure can easily result in rim failure.
>>
>> Check out the aftermarket rims in the local tire shop, some time...almost
>> all of them will have a maximum pressure rating stamped inside and it's
>> almost always surprisingly low.
>>
>>