Because I'm not very smart and need visuals we actually painted a narrower tire (225 if I remember correctly) about 1/3 of the tread. We then mounted it on the car and lowered it on the ground. It as expected left a long narrow mark parallel with the car. We then took a 295 wide tire and did the same right on top of the old mark. As you can imagine we got kind of a fat looking cross shape. Obviously offsets played a part as well in that shape.
We then measured the two patches in inches we found the wider tire did cover more area not by much though. Forgive me we did this some time ago, back when Greg from SZ was posting on tire size advantages/disadvantages. Bottom line was saying a wider tire will cover more area isn't always true and visa-versa. Because wider or narrower is subjective. You can imagine a wider tire of a certain width will have a wider contact patch and would be thus have good traction in corners. Because it displaces weight differently doesn't always mean the patch will be longer front to back. This compared to a certain narrower tire which does not displace the weight the same will have a longer more parallel with the vehicle contact patch. Thus may serve straight line traction better than cornering. This made sense in my mind, maybe someone else has a better way of explaining it.
" I told my son, you have to catch the football other wise this
just
looks like child abuse." - My brother |
