Xantia S1 road wheels - offset?

[Old-Guy]

Needing a second set of wheels for summer tyres and having no luck on For Sale & Wanted, I've just spent a fairly frustrating hour or so ringing a number of 'vehicle dismantlers' in Gloucestershire. A couple of the big ones need me to tell them what the "ET No" is. Had me baffled (bullsh1t baffles brains) if they'd said "Offset in mm" I'd have known what was meant; not that I know what it actually is. I was told it should be stamped on the rims somewhere; nowhere that I can see even on a nice clean wheel. Evidently they just put wheels into stock as Make, width, dia, ET.

So I don't know what the Offset is. Service Citroen cryptically describes the wheels for my VIN as: STEEL WHEEL 5,50 J15 H2 4-15
Slight surprise as I'm sure that when when I balanced the winter tyres, I measured the rim width as 6" (using the balancers width callipers in the prescribed fashion. BUT the Citroen Service drawing shows 3 different wheel designs, two with round holes and one with sort-of shield-shaped holes like the wheel I checked for the ET number. (ET is an acronym for 'Einpresstiefe', literally 'insertion depth'.)

Doing a more general search on Citroen Service for Xantia Estate reveals that the round hole designs are Albertville 5.5J x 14 and Barcelone 5.5J x 15 (what my car should be fitted with) and the other design 6J x 15 is what's actually on the car unless I have a mixture of rim widths

The cryptic description for these (unnamed) wheels is STEEL WHEEL 6 J15 H2 4-15

So now I'm going to have to pull all the trims off and drop the spare carrier to check they are all the same. I don't really want to have a 'summer' set of 4 x 5.5J rims and a 'winter' set + spare wheel that are 6J.

Then looking at the alloy wheels I notice that the last part of the 'specifications' is variously 4-15, 4-18 or 4-19 - so I'm guessing that the last 2 digits are the offset.

Please can anyone enlighten me with certainty?

[Xantidote]

Well, my TD came to me with 5.5J 15" wheels , 15mm offset, and I've not been at all bothered by the winter tyres being on 6J 15" wheels which are 18mm offset.

Haven't looked on the Xantia's original wheels for identification details, but the 6J wheels (which in a previous thread I said came off a 2001 Xsara Picasso), have their identification inscribed into the outer rim of the outside part of the wheel, facing towards the centre of the wheel/hub (clear as mud? Sorry ) You may need to rub hard, maybe a bit of emery, to find it. The ID, after saying "Michelin Made in France" etc etc then showed 6J15H2G ET18 60579. I think the important numbers are fairly obvious, and I assume the 60579 is probably some sort of part number

Good luck in your quest

[Old-Guy]

Thanks for confirming the offset figures and for telling me where the essential numbers really are to be found on Citroen rims!

Interesting that the format of the Picasso wheel ID is so similar to that on the Citroen Service. But 60579 does seem to be the part number, a quick check on Service Citroen shows that all 15" Xantia and Xsara wheels have part numbers that start 5401 followed by xn (where X is a letter and n a number).

I've just checked the 'winter' (4 original) wheels. Sigh of relief; they are at least all the same design. At the earliest opportunity, I'll double-check the rim width with rim callipers, because I know the illustrations on Citroen Service can't be relied on for S1 Xantiae.

[EDIT] I've now checked a front wheel with callipers: definitely 5.5. So once again, inaccurate Service.Citroen drawings sending me off on a wild goose chase. My existing wheels are definitely 5.5J - but that seems to mean that another 4 will be harder to find than 6Js used on other Puegeot/Citroen models.

Hope I've now sourced a decent set of original steel wheels.