Postby amr40509 » Sat Nov 11, 2006 1:15 pm
I wonder about other people's experiences.
To the best of my knowledge, and correct me if I'm wrong:
The Pathfinder S/XE comes with 245/75/16 General Grabber tires. These are what I have on my '06. The pretty much suck from a traction standpoint (especially in the rain). They should be 30.5" tall.
From what I understand other models come with 265/70/16, which is 30.6" except the off-road which is 31.6"
I haven't seen anything to indicate that the off road has any different gearing then the other models.
So my question is, what is the ideal tire size for the Pathfinder with stock gearing? Has anyone out there driven different tire sizes back to back?
I know blink32 should be able to give some feedback, as he has gone all the way up to 32.7" tall tires.
Last weekend I drove a bit under 400 miles of Kentucky/Indiana interstate, so some hills but nothing too steep, at 70-80mph with the cruise on and ended up w/ 21.8mpg. Temp was about 40-45. Tires at 37psi cold. This was a round trip and I used 87oct on the way there, then topped off the 1/2 a tank I needed before the return trip w/ 93oct. Did not see any change in mileage w/ fuel grade.
The reason I wonder about tire size is in playing w/ the trip computer I have noticed that at 60mph I get 24+ mpg, then when I up to 75 it goes down to 21-22mpg.
I figure that the bigger tires should give an effective numerically lower gear ratio, so I would think that would give somewhat better gas mileage at higher speeds, but also that it takes more to get the truck moving, so that should hurt city mileage. Just looking for some real world numbers.
Also have any of you that have gone up on tire size done any towing before/after? I tow a boat every weekend in the summer and don't want to give up too much towing performance.