Good afternoon...I just bought a '95 Gr Cherokee Limited with no extra lift and would like to put 16" tires and rims on it for a little extra clearance.


Does any other brand of vehicle wheels fit my Jeep? It has 225x75x15 currently and I would like to go to 245x75x16 tires if I can find 16" wheels to fit the 4.5" centers.


Thanks in advance.....

Welcome to CF!

You can buy aftermarket wheels to fit your bolt pattern, but you'd be better off buying 30X9.5/15 tires. They are a lot cheaper than 16's and give you way more size options in an "inch" series. I had 33X12.5/15's on my Chevy truck and they were monsters!

The first number is overall diameter. The second is width. The taller they are with a 15" rim makes the sidewall wider. For reference, my WJ has 245/70R16s on it and they are 29.5" tall. A 245/75R16 is 30.5" tall. They are also 9.6" wide.

Remember an inch in tire height only gets you 1/2" in axle height.

Thank you for that information. I was struggling to find any 16" wheels that would fit my bolt pattern. I will check with my local tire guy to confirm clearance.
Also, can I get 8 or 10 ply in 15" tires? It looks like only 6 ply from what I can see.

Probably, but they'd be very stiff. You might check into the ones reinforced with Kevlar though. In some cases you'll want to "air down" for more of a footprint and extra stiffness will make that impossible. The Kevlar is good protection from rock cuts.

You're getting into an area that I'm not familiar with because I've not done any rock crawling or run in deep sand. Most of my 4 wheeling has been deep snow and forest floors. I did a little mud with my Chevy truck, but that thing weighed about 4700 lbs.

Any ZJ from '96-'98 above the Laredo or Special Edition (which is only a Laredo with color-keyed bumpers and side cladding in place of the gray bumpers and side cladding, as well as a 'SPECIAL EDITION' emblem to the front of the 'GRAND CHEROKEE' emblem on each front door, and maybe some extra features on the interior regularly optional on the Laredo) will have 16x7" rims with 5x4.5 bolt pattern... that means that anything other than the rims you have on your Jeep now will work.

Thanks, guys... good info to work with. I appreciate this forum!

I'm considering buying a wheel and tire set from a 2010 Rubicon for my 96 ZJ, not sure what years have the same offset and diameter, can anyone elaborate?

ive seen the breakdown before, cant find it again, I know several years from all jeeps can interchange without adapter plates, just forget specifics. And the 16's are a pretty easy find, they are everywhere in junk yards.

Yeah, you'll need adapter plates to put JK Wrangler rims on a ZJ... bolt pattern is 5x5 (so will fit a WJ or a WK but NOT a ZJ, bolt pattern for a ZJ is 5x4.5).

You can interchange the wheels from any of the following and they'll fit onto a ZJ:

* '87-'95 Wrangler YJ

* '84-'01 Cherokee XJ

* '97-'06 Wrangler TJ

* '02-'07 Liberty KJ

Rims from '91-'05 Ford Explorers and '98-'11 Rangers should fit as well, because they ALSO use a 5x4.5 bolt pattern.

Hope this helps

Tires were mentioned, the wheel diameter has only a small part in your tire height, there is a sticky somewhere on how to calculate tire size on this forum. Its not hard, the first number is your width in millimeters, the second number is your percentage of height of your sidewalls from the width, the third is rim size only. I like a bigger wheel and a little less sidewall for better handling and I can feel the tires better, but a smaller rim and more sidewall can get much better grip in mud or whatever trail. Anyway last time I bought brand new tires I found that tires labeled with height in inches cost more. A considerable amount more. I bought a set of Nitto Terra Grapplers for my girlfriends Dodge TRX-4 (HEMI), about 34 inches in height for about 1200 installed. It would have been much higher if I bought them in inch size. I shopped around a lot on that.

Don't go above 18" wheels unless you like buying wheels, and getting stuck easy, that is if you plan on actually using the jeep.

Oh and thanks for the posting about what will interchange, that helps a lot. I don't really buy much brand new stuff for myself, just my girlfriend. If I get a bad tire or wheel and something happens I can mostly likely handle it, she would probably flip over or something, lol.

them rubicon wheels sure would look nice on a grand Cherokee, I never have liked adapter plates though, any thoughts on that? they seem like they could throw a wheel out of balance and I'm sure you lose strength and the offset grows on the inside. I would think you would have to make sure you check your lug nuts often to make sure they didn't work loose also, I haven't messed with them for a long time. After having two different "mechanics" not tighten wheels properly I get leery about stuff like that.