Will 17" tires be adequate??

twodownzero wrote:


A ton of trucks come with E load rated 17s even to this day. What are you even talking about? What SRW pickup that came with 17s has a Rear GAWR higher than 6200 pounds anyway? And even then, what vehicle has enough payload to even get to the 6200 pounds without busting the GVWR first? I think you're worried about nothing.

By a ton, you mean some base model HD pickups. Very few anymore. Even the steel wheel plain jane trucks are coming with 18s now. The industry standard is 18" or larger now BECAUSE you can't get heavy duty 17s anymore.
Talking SRW here, alot of duallys still come with 17s.

You're right, I'm worried about nothing for a couple reasons.
1. because 3195lb tires wont pop if you have a little too much weight on them.
2. because if I lived in your "can't exceed gvwr without going straight to jail" world, in most cases I couldn't bust out of the 10k gvw rating without exceeding 6400lbs on the rear axle that the tires are good for. You know except the 1 ton srws that magically get a 7klb RAWR even though they're the same as the 3/4 tons with a 6000-6500lb RAWR and happen to have base model 17" wheels but can only run 3195lb tires.
I actually thought about this nonsense when I leased fleet of HD 2500 and 3500 work trucks a few years ago. All had 17" steel wheels even though that was about the time that stock of >3195# rated tires was starting to dwindle.

If you look hard enough, even the mfgs don't care too much or place alot of stock in all the numbers lining up. If they did, you couldn't find a 1 ton with a 7k axle rating sitting on 17" OE wheels.

Actually thats the 3rd reason to not be worried about it, and the 4th reason is I don't actually care.

BUT back on topic, if I had a new(er) truck sitting on OE 17s, when it came time for tires, I'd find some wheels that I actually had a good selection of tire ratings for. That was my only recommendation to myredracer.