I'd been wondering if a larger diameter tire would work on our truck, and found many instances where an inch higher would fit no problem. We do a lot of pretty nasty roads. We ran into a guy while out camping who had done that on the same kind of truck. It bothered me that they were even heavier than our too-heavy E-rated tires, but a little more clearance sure is attractive.
Then this post opened my eyes to "pizza cutter" tires. This and some other anecdotes from off road enthusiasts got us talked into it. We'll report back in a couple years if it was a good idea for a truck camper! We went from 265/70R16 to 235/85R16 (1" more diameter, 1.25" less width), which are just a bit lighter.
We'll get quite a hit on "gas mileage" as reported through the odometer, just based on tire diameter. Our worn tires lost 11/32, so that's a little over 2% "improvement". The new tires will have a 3.6% "hit", so all of a sudden it'll look like a 6% "hit" in gas mileage. Then there's the weight of an old vs. new tire...
By the way, our KO2 tires wore down to 4/32 after 56,000 miles. Can't complain about that.
Edited by rubberlegs, 16 October 2023 - 02:25 AM.