Making modifications to your vehicle may make your vehicle less reliable and potentially more dangerous. The Mitsubishi Four Wheel Drive Club of North America is not liable for any effects caused by these modifications. Owners attempting these modifications do so at their own risk.
A: Yes. Fortunately Montero's, Raider's and Montero Sport's have platforms built to handle larger tires (up to 33") with little or no modification.
The biggest two factors are not tire diameter (30", 30.5", 31", 32", & 33") but tire width, and the rims (and associated offsets) required to accomodate those widths.
Most tire shops will mount tires that are within 2-3" wider than the width of your rims. Larger than that, they tend to all get a little nervous because of the effectiveness of our wonderful judicial system. <GRIN> (i.e. you can sue them if you get into an accident and the tire mounting may have been partially at fault.)
The stock wheel size for our rigs are either 15x6" (steel) or 15x7" (aluminum). Most active club members run 30" or larger tires. The more hard core off roaders run 33x12.5" tires on a wider 15" wheel.
The best suggestion is to check with your local tire shops and see what they are willing to mount on your rims.
For most rig's, you will be able to fit 31x10.5" tires with no modifications to your tires, suspension, or bumpers.
For anything larger, you may need to trim your front bumper ends to allow enough clearance you your tires wont hit them when turning left or right.
Most tire shops will allow you to test fit tires for no charge. If your shop allows you to do so, I highly recommend it. Since the Montero is not that common an SUV (compared to Explorers, Forerunners, etc.) most shops won't know that a 32-33" tire can fit in your wheel well. One thing to note is to try and articulate your suspension to check clearances.
1985-1991 Montero's & Raider's
You can easily fit up to a 33x10.5" tire on the stock rims with little or no complaint from the tire shops. Again a question they'll wonder is if it will fit in the wheel well.
To put on wider tires, I suggest going with at least a 7-8" wide rim (8.5" for aluminum rims) having a neutral '0' offset.
With this combination, I've been able to put on 33x12.5" Geolander MT's with no major problems other than trimming the front bumper's rubber end caps.
One item of note is that you may need to put fender flares on depending on local laws since a the wider tires will most likely extend beyond your wheel wells. Check with your local law enforcement authorities to deterimine your local laws.
1992-2000 Montero's
Later model Montero's can also handle larger tires up to 33" with little or no modifications. Some owners have reported needing to remove their mud flaps to accomodate the larger tires.
1997-2000 Montero Sport
Most owners have found that they were easily able to fit larger tires up to 32" with little or no modifications (wheel changes may be necessary). Again, you may need to work with your offset settings to get it to fit properly..
2001-??? Montero's
We still don't have any data on the newest encarnation of the Montero. We suspect 33" or larger, but will await further testing before commiting to a tire size. Any current 2001+ owners, please inform us of your findings.
