I was wondering does anyone know how much the weight of a tire will effect your trucks power and of course MPG? For example I am looking into the Firestone Destination A/T which weighs about 58lbs, but I wonder if I should just go for the M/T which is more aggressive, and weights 67lbs, 9lbs more. Just curious what really effects power and mpg, is it weight, width or height when it comes to tires... Thanks

 

The bigger impact to heavier rotating mass is braking distance. I doubt that 9lbs is going to make a measurable difference though. I went from a 90lb wheel tire package on my jeep to a 130lb wheel/tire package on my jeep and never really noticed.

 

In racing applications they say that 1 pound of rotational mass is equal to 6 pounds of non-rotational mass. In other words, the 160 lbs of additional tire weight that oldjeep added to his Jeep will make it accelerate like he added an extra 960 lbs of weight to his Jeep. That much weight difference should be noticeable.

MOPWR2U

 

Been riding performance motorcycles for years, right up until Decmber when a lady totalled my bike and almost me. Getting rid of unsprung weight was the quickest way to improve performance. Lighter wheels, lighter/smaller chain, lighter sprockets.... all this made HUGE differences in handling and off the line performance. I'd suspect this also applies to trucks and cars. Can't even imagine how much a set of lightweight magnesium rims would cost, if anyone even makes them for a truck, but I bet they'd make a very noticable difference.

 

Thanks guys I wound up going with a Firestone M/T 285/70/17, rather than a 35 AT tire. I think the aggressive tire will look better than the AT.

 

1 to 6 lbs is about right. I could never remember what the ratio was. I thought I had heard 1 to 10 from someone, but that sounds high.

So anyways, the extra 36 lbs would have been like adding 216 lbs, or another passenger at all times.