I put in a smaller 26" tire that fits signficantly better, both shorter and narrower, and from the looks of the tread would think it has less rolling resistance (these are DOT ProTrack tires used in the front of drag cars.)
And almost finished with the rear suspension redo from the leaf springs into a 3-link setup. This has been a lot of work. Reduced the rearend weight and will improve the handling and MPG with the taller tires, but no simple feat.
I fabricated all the links and mounts.
The suspension mounts are using polyurathane leaf spring bushings that I modified to fit into the 1.5in SS tubing for the ends that was surplus at the metal store. The links where made from the square tubing I had in my shed,
the track bar was fabricated from aluminum round stock, and aluminum tubing I had. So not much cost, but a lot of time and energy (literally, my electric bill jumped about 3x last month!)
It has also gotten very cold now, the garage is barely holding on to 50-degrees these days, and working out in the cold moving around this rear end has strained my 50 year old back. So it looks like time to move the work indoors, and onto the software side of this project, which is building the user interface to the car using a touch screen.