Maybe time to take another look at this debate, which could easily be settled by a little science. Unfortunately, most folks think that their anecdotal, i.e. personal experience is the same thing and, honestly, it’s not. Maybe you’ve run wide tires and they’ve worked well. Perhaps you’ve run skinnier tires and had similar results. Until we have some well-designed studies on both, and those may be available, or so I hear, it’s all just stories around the campfire.
In my decidedly unscientific experience, based on the vehicles, terrain, weather, etc. (Pacific Northwest Rainforest, central Oregon high desert) that I’ve experienced over the years, I prefer skinnier tires in nearly all cases. My inexpert feeling is that huge wide tires are more for show than go. They look great, if you’re into that, but have you ever noticed what sort of tires are used in parts of the world where off-road is often the only road? Wide heavy tires come with a whole host of problems, often associated with the exponential increase in rotational mass. Skinny tires weigh less and from what I’ve read in articles by tire designers and others I respect, don’t give up much in traction. That has also been my experience.
In 2000, I bought a new Disco 2. Great vehicle…when it wasn’t in the shop. Almost immediately I installed 33” tires that were about the same width as the stock tires. Going to the larger diameter quickly resulted in somewhat degraded braking and handling on road, -as one would expect - but gave me better traction off-road, so the trade-off was acceptable. However as time went by, I did some more reading and research on how tires work and discovered that much of what I had thought of as “self-evident” was not supported by the evidence of actual tire testing by folks who do that sort of thing for a living.
I decided to do an experiment of my own, again not scientific, but just to compare against my own experience. When the 33s were pretty won out, I mounted up a set of 235-85/16E Goodyear MT/Rs. If I remember right, they were about 7.5 or so inches in width, compared to the old tires that were between 10 and 11. The result was interesting. On-road, braking actually seemed to improve. Mileage improved incrementally, but there was more side-to-side motion which I attribute to the quite tall sidewalls on 16x6” steel rims.
Off-road was a revelation. Compared to the wider MT/Rs that I had been running previously, there was no degradation of traction that I could identify. Every time I thought I might reach the pizza cutter’s limits, they just kept going. On more than one occassion, I’ve pulled large pickups with 37s and larger off the beach, out of the mud and out of the snow. I never had one come off the bead despite airing down to 6 or 7 psi. If I had a dollar for every time someone told me, “You’ll never make on those cute little tires!” I’d have a vacation home in Moab.
This is just my experience based on my recreational off-roading and search and rescue operations going back 35 years, or so. (Our Ford SAR trucks all had skinny mudders or A/T tires), so results will almost certainly vary. Currently, I’m running 285/75-16E Goodyear Duratracs on my 100 series, but only because they have to fit on the stock 16x8” Toyota wheels.
