Large tires, Wide tires, wheel hubs, and bearing failures

[Gordy]

Thought I would check to see how many of you out there running oversized tires wide, or tall, or both experience more frequent bearing failures.



I say this because when GM designs a wheel hub, or a bearing its speced for specific tire / rim sizes.


Running a taller tire not only adds more weight, but also creates more leverage on the bearing when cornering.


Running a wide tire does the same thing.


Now I'm talking excess here. I myself up graded from 70/245's stock to 75/265's which is not excessive.



Back in my high school, and younger days it was all about jacking the truck up, and bigger tires. Now it seems to be all about lowering the truck, and low profile tires. To each there own, I myself don't get the lowering, and rough riding low profiles.


Me I'm happy with my stock unit. Trying to keep her cherry.






Gordy

 

[2005yukonxl]

FWIW on my tundra i have larger, heavier, wider tires with more offset than stock. no issues.

 

[M3PO]

Gordy in my older years, I have wondered this too. I would think things wear out faster, but I doubt the younger generations are worried about it just yet.
Mine is 'Soccer Mom Stock", well my Denali came with the 20" option. Even though the lowered and jacked up trucks are not for me, I still like to look at the ones that are done right. When I was younger I loved nothing more than breaking and fixing cars, though drag racing was more my thing.

 

[Gordy]

Reasoning behind

I only bring this up because I just replace a front hub on my 01....But its 10 years old with 125K on it. The hub was not sloppy, but made noise.


I have seen on here much newer than mine replacing front hubs, but do not know on some whether stock wheel sizes were on the vehicle.



I had a buddy who ran 44's on his late 70's dodge ramcharger. I argued he would tear up his stock axle do to the weight, and diameter of the tire putting more strain on the bearing assembly, and axle. Would'nt listen. He ended up one night after a bar breakfast escapade losing his front wheel going up in a yard, and hitting a house. needless to say he was dead in the water, and a DUI to boot.


Lucky for him if it was that he was driving at in town speeds. Could have been a lot worse.

 

[M3PO]

Ha, good story! You are right too, I had a similar incident when I was younger, I had a friend that had one of the goofy fiberglass dun buggy conversion that had huge as wheels/tires and used a dinky little VW engine/trans. We driving in rush hour, he came flying up to dead-stop traffic and when he hit the brakes the rear wheel passed us by! Luckily no one was hurt.