Metcalf
Expedition Leader
It would have been nice to see wheel width taken into account, wider tires are going be behave differently on a narrower vs wider rim. The testing setup was biased towards the narrower tire that way.
One of the major downsides I see with narrow tires is that they tend to lose lateral stability as the aspect ratio goes up. A tall skinny tire will fold over more on sidehills and when trying to turn vs a wider tire at the same air pressure.
Most of this stuff, even down to wide vs narrow tires, is in the nuance category of off road vehicle performance for most people. As long as you have a round tire that holds air you are going to get just about as far as anyone else. It isn't until you really start using low ( single digit ) air pressures that you start to notice differences admittedly small differences....and honestly that will only be in some situations that you start to get that last 10% or even 3% of vehicle performance one to another.
I'm in the wider tire camp....
It doesn't matter how much tire you have, if you push the vehicle far enough, everyone ends up on the end of a winch rope eventually. On this spring snow wheeling trip, the difference between 6psi and 3psi was amazing on a 40x13.5R17 tire. Being able to make it that last few miles to the 'end of the road' and back out again was very rewarding. Everyone has different goals and motivations with what they want to do with their vehicles.
One of the major downsides I see with narrow tires is that they tend to lose lateral stability as the aspect ratio goes up. A tall skinny tire will fold over more on sidehills and when trying to turn vs a wider tire at the same air pressure.
Most of this stuff, even down to wide vs narrow tires, is in the nuance category of off road vehicle performance for most people. As long as you have a round tire that holds air you are going to get just about as far as anyone else. It isn't until you really start using low ( single digit ) air pressures that you start to notice differences admittedly small differences....and honestly that will only be in some situations that you start to get that last 10% or even 3% of vehicle performance one to another.
I'm in the wider tire camp....
It doesn't matter how much tire you have, if you push the vehicle far enough, everyone ends up on the end of a winch rope eventually. On this spring snow wheeling trip, the difference between 6psi and 3psi was amazing on a 40x13.5R17 tire. Being able to make it that last few miles to the 'end of the road' and back out again was very rewarding. Everyone has different goals and motivations with what they want to do with their vehicles.
