How wide are the stock wheels on a 74 L Bug and what are the widest tyres that will fit on those rims?

Only asking as the tyres on mine look like they are off the boat trailer from Noah's Ark and I have 4 brand new 195/55/15's in the shed.

They are 4.5" and the tyre manufacturers don't recommend anything wider than 165s on them.

One of my old bugs had 195/65s on and they were very dodgy, the side walls ballooned out a lot and they were very vague feeling in corners due to the sidewalls flexing.

I've have also had 185/65s on mine which is border line on 4.5"s the walls still balloon out but not as bad.

The 195/55s you have are way too short, 2" smaller in rolling diameter than stock so they wont fill out the guards and give it a skateboard look but the bigger problem is it will screw up the gearing and be screaming at highway speeds.

Sitting the wheels with the 195's still fitted they are almost identical in height. I might just buy some Empi 914 copies and put them on those

They may look the same against it with no load on but a stock 165/80R15 is 644mm where as the 195/55R15 is only 595mm which is 8% different.

So now what you would normally be doing the revs at 100km/h you will only be doing 92km/h and your speedo will read 8.6% fast too.

Just means its dropping your top speed from 135 to 123km/h