RE: Wider tires on the front!

[audidudi@delphi.com (Jeffrey J. Goggin)]

>Yes, having different sized tires will cause extra wear.   I don't think 
>it is a huge amount, hence my decision to run with the different sized 
>tires fro quite a while this past spring.   It is a significant amount 
>extra though.  If the tires have 5% more circumference, then you'll end 
>up with roughly 5% more friction in the centre diff.   The problem I 
>didn't like was that when I locked the centre diff (for maximum traction 
>on a drag race style launch) the dogs in the locker would not unlock 
>without alot of screwing around in the parking lot.

The 235/40-17s on the front of my Ur-Q have a calculated diameter of 619.8mm
and the 215/45-17s on the rear work out to 625.3mm ... in reality, because
the rears are half worn, the overall diameter is just about the same.  In
any event, the worst case difference is only 5.5mm, which is less than 1%
... personally, I don't think this is going to cause much additional wear
above-and-beyond that caused by normal driving as Brendan pointed out.  (It
*definitely* helped tame some of the car's understeer, too!)
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