Picking Tires for our Revel

In the Revel Facebook group, the topic of picking new tires comes up often. There are nearly as many opinions as to what tire is best as there are tires that will work on our vans. I’m not going to express an opinion of what tire is best, but just going to share the things we considered and tools we used when deciding what tire would work for us.

Tire style / type

Tires for our vans are available with designs that vary with how the tire is expected to be used. The typical categories are:

Touring – More comfortable and quieter ride, good dry, wet and snow traction (typically better than All Terrain) on pavement, and better tread life than other options

All Terrain – These provide a compromise between on road performance (ride quality, on pavement traction, and tread life) and enhanced off road traction and durability. The bias of the compromise varies within the category depending on tire construction and tread pattern.

Mud Terrain / Off road – Similar to more aggressive all terrain tires, but even more focused on off road traction at the expense of on road manners and tread life.

Snow – Specialized tires for snow and ice traction. Tread and compounds (sometimes studded) optimized for driving in cold conditions. Typically used in winter only on a separate wheel set.

For most the decision comes down to selecting Touring versus All Terrain and if All Terrain, how aggressive or make the jump to “Mud Terrain”. There is no wrong answer.

The factors we considered are: How much of what type of driving we plan to do. Price, yes price matters and typically touring and less aggressive tires are less expensive. And finally, appearance, it may not matter to everyone, but I do like our van to look cool ☺.

When deciding within a category or group of tires, tools and reviews like those found on Tirerack.com https://www.tirerack.com/content/tirerack/desktop/en/tire_decision_guide.html can be very helpful. The All-Terrain category is especially broad and seeing ratings and reviews that compare a given tires bias for on road vs. off road performance is good for finding the right tire.

Tire Load Carrying Capacity / Load Range

The “stock” tires on our Revel were the BF Goodrich TA KO2s load range E, size 245/70x17 (more on size in the next section), which have a maximum load of 3000lb. per tire. The tire needs to be able to carry the weight it will see at the axle. The rated weight and tire data for your Revel can be found on the driver’s door jamb and looks like this.

GVWR – Gross Vehicle Weight Rating – the maximum total weight of your Revel
GAWR – Front and Rear axle weight ratings, not be exceeded and sum to be less than GVWR

The stock tires with a 3000 lb. maximum load give a small margin for our van (rear axle rating). Larger tires typically have a higher maximum load for a given load range. We stayed with load range E. There may be some tires in other load ranges that have sufficient load carrying capacity but sticking to load range E and at least the stock size or larger tire is a safe bet.

Tire size selection
Tire type / size decoder (from Les Schwab)

Stock Revels come with either 16 inch Mercedes steel wheels or 17 inch Method alloy wheels and either LT245/75x16 or LT245/70x17 tires depending on the wheel fitted. The change in aspect ratio (75 and 70) means the overall diameter of the wheel and tire combo is the same for both wheel options. A handy tool for comparing different tires in terms of overall diameter, circumference, sidewall and even speedometer error if changing sizes can be found at tiresize.com  https://tiresize.com/comparison/ .

Things to consider when choosing a tire size for your van:

The stock tire size is what your van has been calibrated to use. Handling and performance will be different with larger tires. Namely, larger sidewalls will dull the handling and larger diameter tires effectively make the gearing taller meaning slightly slower acceleration and a bit less pulling power off-road. Also, your speedometer calibration will be inaccurate unless you have it recalibrated and for newer vans with adaptive cruise control larger sizes (>275 width) have been found to be problematic. It varies, but typically larger tires tend to be more difficult to balance (some shops are better at this than others). Finally, and this applied to us, larger tires make the van a bit taller overall. Make sure it will fit in your garage if applicable and be aware that things like bike racks will be a bit higher off the ground.

All of that said, moving up a size or three can be very beneficial. First and perhaps most importantly, larger tires do help get rid of the hippo on tiny roller skates look of the van, at least partially ☺. Clearance for offroad obstacles is increased. Ride comfort on pavement and off improves in the base case and even more when you are able to run lower pressures for the load carrying capacity needed.

Tiresize.com has a great tool for seeing what pressures you can run for a given tire size. https://tiresize.com/pressure-calculator/

Sample comparison for 245 vs. 265 Revel rear tire pressure for the same load capacity

So if you have decided to go bigger tires, how big should you go? Part of that is up to how much clearance you need, how much speedometer error you can live with (or recalibrate for), how high you can lift your bike, whether or not you want to modify or lift your van suspension, buy bigger wheels and so forth.

There are technical limits as eluded to above. Van Compass has posted a great summary of what tire / wheel combinations fit with and without modification that can be found here ➔ https://vancompass.com/pages/frequently-asked-questions 

From Van Compass for 2018/19 Revels (2017/2018 NCV3 Sprinter chassis)

From Van Compass for 2020 and newer Revels (2019-2022 VS30 Sprinter chassis)

Summary

There are two primary decisions to make when buying new tires for your van, what type of tire and what size. Hopefully the tools shared here can help you with that decision. After that, researching within that type and size comes down to details you can find online at places like Tirerack.com or by asking others who have experience with the same or similar tires.

Author: Mike Faber, Revel Expert
Revel DIY Project Scoping and Assistance
Have Questions? Email Mike at [email protected]