I came upon a very useful, yet interesting web tool - a tire size calculator that highlights some effects of changing your wheel & tire size. Among other outcomes, larger wheels will increase vehicle height, reduce acceleration (because the larger wheel & tire combo has a larger rotating mass and requires more force to turn), and increase the actual top speed - while the speedometer reading will be inaccurate (lower than actual).

Other effects of altering wheel size are: changes to suspension geometry (alignment), affecting ride quality, and larger, heavier wheels normally reduce braking performance - resulting in increased braking distances (since a greater mass has a higher momentum and therefore requires more force to stop).

Check out the calculator here.

Tags: heavy wheels, large wheels, plus sizing, tire size, wheel performance, wheel size

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 19th, 2008 at 10:33 pm and is filed under Technical. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.