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What Happens When You Change Your Tires With a Different Size?

What Happens When You Change Your Tires With a Different Size?

Can you replace your tires with a different size? The short answer is you can, but it affects a wide range of factors in your vehicle’s performance.

For a longer answer, we break down exactly what happens when you start drifting away from the standard tire size of your vehicle and start making it more of a monster truck.

Factors Affected When You Replace Your Tires With a Different Size

Firstly and namely, if you have dreams of making your truck into a pseudo-monster truck, the first things that will be affected the moment you start driving are both the odometer and speedometer. Both of these gauges are calibrated to the size of your tires so when you start to tinker with tire size, the accuracy of both of these is going to decrease.

Bear in mind that the tire size you choose can be more dangerous if you choose the wrong size of tire, so make sure to consult with a mechanic when you’re thinking about changing tire sizes and choose one that’s still safe for your vehicle.

How Taller Tires Affect Your Car or Truck

Alright, if you’re choosing taller tires it’s clear you’re really invested in this monster truck idea—that’s okay. However, you should know what this means when you’re driving around in a vehicle that wasn’t originally built for handling taller tires.

Let’s start with the benefits of taller tires:

  • Reduces the fender well gap
  • Increases ground clearance
  • Provides a softer ride

Out of the 2 options of taller and wider tires, these are also easier to install. Typically this is when buying a lift kit makes sense to accommodate for the extra tire size.

However, there are clear drawbacks to this kind of tire increase. These include:

  • A loss of torque for every inch taller the tire is
  • A negative influence on stopping power
  • A potentially rougher ride while driving on pavement

Truck with taller tires

How Wider Tires Affect Your Car or Truck

Out of the 2 options, wider tires definitely have some significant positives, but you need to keep in mind road laws for choosing them and ensure your tire width is never larger than the width of a standard road lane.

Some of the major positives of wider tires (without changing the overall diameter) are:

  • Better lateral grip
  • Increased grip on hard braking
  • Less vehicle roll in corners
  • Gives a low-profile, aesthetically pleasing appearance

However, the negative includes:

  • Higher rolling resistance (resulting in higher gas consumption)
  • Dramatically reduces turning radius
  • Increase road noise (resulting in a less quiet drive)
  • Won’t always fit on your original equipment wheel

Overall, if you choose to change out your tires for ones that are taller or wider, understand that although your car, truck, or SUV may look cool, it will also have some notable drawbacks as well.

 

 

Interested in getting the right size of tire for your vehicle? Contact us today to get top-quality used tires!