In today’s blog, we are going to be discussing a few things that you might not have considered when thinking about upgrading the GVM of your vehicle, and look into why our ROH Assault Wheels are such a vital part of our 200 Series GVM setup!
Disclosure: We were gifted ROH Wheels in order to share our opinion about their products, but this is not a paid sponsored post. We are also sharing our knowledge from personal experiences and are not qualified professionals. Please seek professional advice before modifying your vehicle.
What is GVM?
GVM stands for Gross Vehicle Mass (GVM) and is the maximum total mass of a fully-loaded motor vehicle as specified by the vehicle manufacturer (Transport for New South Wales, 2022).
Image: Transport for New South Wales (2022)
Upgrading your GVM
To upgrade your GVM you’re simply increasing the amount of payload your vehicle can legally carry. For many people this is essential when wanting to modify and add hundreds of kilograms of accessories to your vehicle, equipping it to tackle Australia and/or tow a caravan or camper trailer.
Generally speaking, most camper trailers, hybrid caravans and off-road caravans can have ball weights in excess of 200kg and in some cases up to but not exceeding 450kg. That weight, plus the weight of passengers, fuel and accessories is all factored into the cars GVM. So you can see how quickly it adds up, plus, why it’s so important to select the correct accessories so you’re not overweight and a danger to yourself, your family and others, but also to stop you from accidentally voiding your insurance.
While living on the road full-time for the last two years, we have seen more illegal vehicles than legal vehicles and here’s why we think that is…
It is a common misconception that simply upgrading a car’s suspension components will increase the car’s GVM and what people don’t know is that there are many other factors to consider.
These are just some of the other factors that go into a GVM upgrade:
- Brakes
- Tyre size
- Wheel size
- Wheel offset
- Tyre poke
- and many more…
All these factors are taken into consideration when keeping that upgrade warranted.
Selecting the correct wheel for a GVM upgrade
The most overlooked factor and the one we want to discuss today is selecting the correct wheel (rim) for a GVM Upgrade. It is crucial to select a wheel that can handle the weight but is also practical for the application. We have upgraded the GVM of our 200 series Landcruiser to 4015kg. Our new axel load rating is 1950kg on the front and 2145kg on the rear. This means that we had to find a wheel that was rated to at least 1073kg per wheel (to calculate what your wheel rating, halve your maximum axel rating). After much research, we selected the ROH Graphite Assault Wheel with a rating of 1500kg per wheel which is far more than we needed for our GVM obligations. They also look incredible which is a huge factor for anyone selecting wheels for their car.
The specs of our ROH Graphite Assault Wheel are:
17×9, 150 PCD, +35 offset & load rating of 1500kg.
Another reason why we selected the ROH Assault Wheels with a +35 offset is so the tyres and wheels remain within the guards. You would not pass an engineering check if the wheels poke outside the guards of the vehicle. In our case with the 200 series the +35 offset wheels sit exactly on the guards and with any more negative offset (say +25 or more negative), we would be unable to get a GVM upgrade (without adding flares).
On the other side, too much offset in your wheel can result in the tyre clashing and fouling with the upper control arms and result in scrubbing on guards and further issues. So you can see there’s a fine line between too little offset and too much, and for us, +35 on the Landcruiser 200 is a perfect balance. Along with selecting the correct wheel offset, it is important to choose the correct tyre size to avoid, scrubbing, fouling and inherent issues. There are also regulations regarding tyre sizes with GVM upgrades which change from vehicle to vehicle. It is worth adding that the offset of wheels and the PCD stud pattern in some cases can change their weight ratings on the wheel. So it’s worth checking your particular vehicle specifications because different vehicles have different stud patterns.
Our final consideration for us was that typically speaking the 200 series VX and Sahara variants have bigger brakes so only 18” wheels will fit, however, ROH wheels actually make 17” wheels that fit the VX and Saharas. For us, we wanted the benefits of having the smallest wheel possible and having the max amount of rubber on the car and when we found out we could fit a 17” wheel on our VX 200 we could not resist!
After using and abusing these rims for the last 6 months full-time, we are not only super happy with the quality of the wheels but we are also very happy with our GVM upgrade and are stoked we could keep it all legal by selecting a wheel with the correct weight ratings and specifications. We think the car looks incredible and it is highly practical for travelling around Australia.
We would have to say that the wheels are by far one of our favourite modifications we have made on our 200 series tourer and think it just finishes off the car perfectly! We highly recommend ROH wheels for your next build.
Find more information about the ROH Assault Wheels here: https://roh.com.au/wheels/assault/
References:
NSW Transport, 2023, https://roadsafety.transport.nsw.gov.au/stayingsafe/drivers/caravan-safety/weighing.html#:~:text=Gross%20Vehicle%20Mass%20(GVM)%20is,Loaded%20Vehicle%20Mass%20(MLVM).