Quote:
Originally Posted by LeanBurn
No matter how high you lift...still drags the diffs and axles in the mud, rocks and air apparently.
I never understood this practice.
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It's pretty simple, you fit bigger tyres to make room under the axles. You lift the body/ suspension to make room for the bigger tyres.
It's worth keeping in mind the usual caveat of not putting too much stock into the MPG claims of the non-hypermiler.
I have a TJ that runs the same engine/ drive train. I did the same basic swap from 225's to 31" tyres and I'm running ~15% over EPA. Brakes are fine although the stock parts only lasted around 20K miles. It will still pretty much pull there rear tyres off the ground in an emergency stop. You need to use more pedal pressure, that doesn't mean the brakes are poor, if you can still lock your wheels on coarse chip, you're fine.
I get the same 18+ MPG he did stock, but with a much less aerodynamic vehicle. Mine is for off road use only.
The gearing thing is also non-sense, you only loose acceleration in first and top gears, there are a stack of gears in between (yes there's added inertia but the 4.0 should be grunty enough for most everyone). In my six speed, first is still very low and top basically idles along at 30mph.
I'm guessing his is an auto and the higher rollout is causing more slippage at lower speeds and possibly not engaging the TC lock as much. Of course you don't buy an auto for MPG.
You can feel the bigger tyres beneath you, but a lot of that I put down to the front and rear live axles. You'll never get 'car like' ride and handling from a live front axle.
My next tyres will be at least 32's or possibly 33's.