Quote:
Originally Posted by tot
Technically, the amount of rubber touching the road is just a function of the weight on the wheel and the tire pressure. With wider tires the shape is wider making the ratio of the wheel touching/not touching the ground smaller. This means better cooling on high speeds, nothing more.
You could lower the air pressure to make the touch area bigger, but that reduces the pressure on the ground and changes nothing either (if the friction would be linear, which I don't know if true in this case).
I agree with your first point, wider tires look better.  |
Way off base here. You can't air down a radial tire to increase the contact patch. Airing down a radial tire causes the center of the tire to cup in toward the wheel and lose contact with the road. Bias-Ply tires you can do that to a point but you will not significantly increase the contact patch. A wider wheel/tire combo will increase the size and shape of the contact patch.