Originally Posted By: buck91
What will effect the fuel economy of any given set of tires more width, weight or tread pattern? I want to save up for a tire upgrade sooner than later and will be looking for the most aggressive tire in a stock size that wont have amy negative impact on my fuel mileage....
As Meep pointed out, there are a lot of factors that affect rolling resistance 9and therefore, fuel economy).
There's data that says that even tires of the same size can have HUGE differences in RR - up to 60%.
There are 3 factors that affect RR: The amount of flexing taking place (controlled mostly by inflation pressure), the amount of material being flexed (this is mostly tread rubber), and the properties of the rubber being flexed (which the average guy is NOT going to be able to figure out) - and of these the rubber properties are the most important.
The problem here is that Rolling Resistance, Treadwear, and Traction form a technology triangle. To get good values of one, one (or both) of the others has to be sacrificed.
Car manufacturers specify low values of rolling resistance in order to get good fuel economy numbers - and in response, the tire manufacturers sacrifice the treadwear and traction to get those low values. that's why you'll hear a lot of complaints about OE tires.
Taking this a step further, worn tires get better fuel economy than new tires - all other things being equal - because new tires have more tread rubber (more material being flexed.)
- AND -
All other things being equal, an All Terrain tires is going to have worse RR than an All Season tire. (more tread rubber)
And a further guess, the tread rubber on an All Terrain tires is likely to be more chip and chunk resistant - and that further hurts RR.
But this is about a 7 year old pickup that is likely on its second set of tires. The first set was likely pretty good for fuel economy and probably about the best that is going to be achieved. If those were acceptable for traction and treadwear, that is where I suggest going.
HOWECVER, it is likely those tires are no longer available - or at least, they are no longer the same as when supplied 7 years ago.
One word of caution: This pickup came with LT tires and it is possible that there are P type tires also available with the same dimensions. DO NOT replace LT tires with P type tires - not enough load carrying capacity = more likely failures.
Advise: First find your vehicle tire placard where it lists the original tire size and the inflation pressure for that size. The placard is likely on the driver's doorpost. While you are there, look at the tires - size, make and model.
Then look your vehicle up on Tire Rack's web site. Make sure the size is the same. Everything line up? If, yes, proceed. If not figure out why they don't.
Then look up tires available in that size. What were the original tires? What about the ones you have now?
Here's the hard part: Look at the warranties for treadwear. Longer wear probably equals worse fuel economy.
Side note: I just noticed something new on Tire Rack's web site. They now have a tab for OE tires that lists the fitments a particular tire had. This is a bit misleading as not only is the list NOT delineated by size (which is VERY important), but it seems to imply that ALL of the tire sizes listed were OE (Not always true) - AND - that they haven't been changed since then (almost guaranteed not to be true if the tires are more than 3 years old.).
