Minilites were not actually listed for the P6 as an option, but were available at the time. They were a factory option on police spec SD1's, which have the same stud spacings. These come up on Ebay occasionally. But note that SD1's have a different thread on the wheelstud - so you would either have to change the studs to SD1 or get special wheelnuts made up.
Minilite are still in business (search on Google!) and will sell you a new set of suitable wheels.
The P6 has a very restrictive rear wheelarch at the front of the arch behind the door closure panel (D post). P6's were sold with 205 section tyres (Dunlop Denovo run flats) but the wheel offset has to be exactly right to allow this.
This is a quote from one of my pervious posts on the subject:
OK, here comes the quote from the previous posts:
I've now done the trial fitting of my modified SD1 Vitesse 15" wheels to the car and so can report on offsets!
And the news is that they are comfortably clear of both the unmodified D post double skin section and of the boot side portion of the wheel arch. !!!!~~HOORAY~~!!!!
I'm afraid there will be quite a long wait before I can report on whether cornering loads shift the suspension around enough to give any rubbing problems! Bearing in mind that Denovo's were 205 section and the amount of clearance, I don't expect any issues though.
These wheels are fitted with 205/65 X 15 94V Pirelli P6000 Powergy tyres. These tyres are correct for rolling radius but you should note that they have a marginally narrower tread than many tyres of this section.
I have measured up the modified wheels and get a dimension across the outside of the wheel of 190mm and a depth from the inner rim edge of the wheel to the contact face to the hub of 148mm. By my calculation that gives an offset of 53mm into the car. The figure for the offset is unaffected by the rim size (it is relative to the centre line of the rim) so this dimension could be quoted when buying any width rim to give an exact central location within the wheel arch.
I don't reckon it would be wise to try going above 205 section. You might just get away with 215, but it would need a trial fitting first and for the wheels to be absolutely exact to this offset.
The wheels were produced by first carefully measuring the exact offset of the unmodified wheels. Each wheel was then individually machined to give the quoted offset by skimming the raised "boss" that seats against the hub. Between the five wheels we had (three from a car set of five, and two odd individuals which replaced wheels from the set which had damaged stud holes - looked like they had been run with the nuts loose and the whole wheel had been moving on the hub - that's V8 power for you!) THREE DIFFERENT OFFSETS!! Clearly Leyland quality control left something to be desired! Hence the individual machining which took off around 3.5mm.
For comparison I have also measured the Jensen Interceptor alloys originally intended for the car and sometimes seen fitted to P6's. Their offset came out at 30mm - so they would need around an INCH taking off to achieve the same offset. I really couldn't contemplate that much strength loss! Equally it illustrates the level of butchery required to the D post to allow them clearance when unmodified.
If you were really committed to the Jensen's, I reckon you could lose 5mm from the wheel, perhaps 5 mm by skimming the face of the hub, leaving around 15mm to gain by single skinning the double skin section of the D post. That sounds just feasible, but rather a lot of effort! Another possible dodge would be to shorten the half shafts very slightly to pull the De Dion tube in slightly narrower - best to try on a scrap one first though as I'm not sure how much tolerence there is inside the tube slider.
I don't have an offset figure for the standard steel wheels, but note that they probably don't run exactly central in the wheel arch. Nor do I have one for either the P5 (15") or P6 (14") Rostyles. Anyone out there with any minus their tyres - could you measure them up and post please.
I do know that the P5 Rostyle was a bit too far out for 205's, 195's are really about the limit. In any case the rim width is really too narrow for 205's. One possible solution if someone really wanted the P5 Rostyles would be to have different rims fitted to the wheel centres. This would be quite easy to do at time of rechroming and I know of at least one firm that does this sort of thing (albeit for lorry wheels).
I hope that adds to the fund of knowledge! Lets see some more data for the various types of steel wheel and also for those Jeep Cherokee wheels?
So what does that mean in these circumstances? The spacers are going to push the wheels out from the car by 34mm. So we need to ADD that to the 53mm to get the actual offset you are looking for. IE 87mm. Any less offset than that and you are into varying levels of butchery of the D post and or wing flairing variety. Don't worry about how wide the wheels are for now - width and offset are independent of each other. We do know that maximum tyre size in an unmodied wheelarch is 205. Any bigger and they will foul on the side of the boot as well as on the D post. If you want to use a bigger tyre size than this then you are committing to D post etc mods. Say you wanted to use 245 section. That's 40mm bigger than 205, so you need to ADD a further 20mm from the wheel offset to get the same clearance to the boot wall. And of course roughly 40mm interference with the D post etc.
Once you've decided how much pain you want to endure on the D post etc, you can choose your tyre width. Then I'd use the rolling diameter calculator mentioned above to arrive at the exact tyre size you're planning to use. Next a trip down the tyre shop to acquire some scrap ones of the correct size and lay them up in your wheel arches. Review the D post pain decision and make sure your'e happy with the amount of butchery. Then you can choose your rim width based on the chosen tyre width and profile and procede to buy tyres, wheels and spacers!
Hope that helps; anything that's not clear post again!
Chris
