random thought on big tires

[majek5]

Originally Posted by cleatus12r

Just for the sake of discussion......

I ran 49" tall tires on my old 95 F350 PSD. The truck had 4.10:1 gearing in the differential. I could NOT drive the truck 75 MPH in overdrive (5th gear) because the engine simply could not keep momentum. I went from 15 MPG highway with the stock tires (265/75-16) to roughly 5 MPG highway with the 49" tires even though gearing remained the same.

Mathematically speaking, I went from a tire that made 637 rev/mile to a tire that made 413 rev/mile. This is a nearly 35% difference. As far as MPG goes, the difference is nearly the same (33%). The truck would barely get out of it's own way, turned 1200 RPM at 75 MPH in 5th gear, but the mileage decreased significantly.

But it looked good gettin the 5 mpg.