Except for a short time in San Francisco, all of my driving experience has been in snowy areas including four winters in Winnipeg, Manitoba where ice covers the roads for most of the winter. It doesn’t take long to realize that the most important aspect for safe winter driving is not ground clearance or AWD, but good winter tires. While in Calgary I even experimented with studded tires on my wife’s RWD G35 coupe. We put the Nokian Haakapeliitta 8 tires on the car and it was amazing on hard snow and icy roads. This winter, I want to use the Discovery both around town and when we visit the mountains, so I started looking for the best winter tire option.
My goal was to find a good tire/wheel combination with a narrow tire that had a tall sidewall. The biggest hurdle was finding the right wheel.
My first stop as usual, was tirerack.com. They show one wheel option with a few different options for winter tires. Even though I was nervous about fender clearance with the 0 mm offset, I liked the look of the Method wheels, so I placed an order. The next day, they called me to say the Method wheels were 8 inches wide, so the narrow tires I selected would not work. I cancelled that order and started looking again.
Wheels
I was looking for a 16X7 inch wheel for a 225/75/16 tire as this would have the same overall diameter of the stock tires. I quickly realized there are very few available options for Discovery II, 16X7 wheels unless you are OK with standard steel wheels. One of the forums listed the following as the OEM 16X7 options:
These were for the diesel engine disco’s that were only available in Europe. Except for the steelies, none of the wheels were available to buy in the US, and I wasn’t super excited about how any of them looked anyway.
The only after market 16X7 alloy road wheel I could find for the Discovery 2 was the Terrafirma Dakar wheel, TF108. I liked the way they looked and they were in stock and available from Rimmer Bros in the UK.
These wheels are made by Evo Corse in Italy and only seem to be available as Terrafirma so they must have been specifically made for them. They are a hub centric design versus most of the after market wheels that are lug centric and use the OEM style lug nuts. These wheels also had the perfect offset for my tire size.
Tires
The OEM tires had the following ratings:
I had decided the optimal tire size was 225/75/16 and now needed to narrow my search by looking for a load rating of at least 109 and possible inflation up to 46 PSI. To meet both of those requirements, you are into a 10-ply, E rated tire. I have had really good results using Blizzak tires on previous cars and one of my current cars, so decided to give their brand new winter truck tire a try.
This tire has a max speed rating of 106 mph versus the stock tire’s rating of 130 mph, but I think it was a little aspirational of Land Rover to think of the Discovery as a sport SUV that will ever go over 100 mph.
Final Product
I like the more purposeful look. My first drive impressions are that the taller sidewall tires are less harsh over small bumps even though they are stiff E rated tires. I have some center caps on order and will be on the hunt for black lug nuts. Will update this post when I get a chance to test the tires in some real winter conditions