Light tires for good MPG

Just picked up a set of steel OEM rims. A bit banged up but $25 for the lot... I mean who cares.

Looking to get some lightweight summer tires so I can stretch my off road/winter tires longer. Any recommendations? There's plenty online but I care more for the forum goers here than some random list.

 

Michelin Defenders are the best for stock size and street use for MPG's.

 

Hands down right here^

 

Lightweight P rated low rolling resistance highway tread pattern will yield best MPG. Can even go a tad skinnier than stock if you had 265’s and go 245’s instead. They were also a stock size tire.

 

I have been buying Jeep Gladiator take offs, 33” Falken WILDPEAK M/T‘s. $175 set of 4.

 

I second this. The best effect will be a narrower tire plus max inflation 40-45psi to improve mpg. Just remember you will be slipperier on wet roads. Does no good to gain 1.5 mpg just to slide into a honda accord two months from now.

 

As others said, skinnier helps. 245/75r16 is same diameter as 265/70r16 in case you’re worried about losing any height.

The Michelins mentioned are prob the best all around tire in existence. A very similar, but far cheaper, tire is the Kumho Crugen. Pretty dang light in p-metric sizes, super quiet, pretty good in wet stuff, good in snow, etc.

 

X4

I got my best mileage with one size up Michelins. They aren’t cheap though, but I think they had 70k when I swapped to my 285 Toyo’s.

 

On the tires topic, I dunno why I'm having such a prob finding this again, but I used to have a bookmark for a site that let you plug in your tire diameter and width, and you could give it a tire size and inflation rate, it would spit out fitment/measurement details. It was like a tire calculator or something.

Basically, you could use this to figure out alternate tire sizes to give you roughly the same rolling circumference on different sized rims.

 

Is this the site you're talking about? +1 for Michelin Defenders, I went down to 265/70r18's P load range on my Tundra (from 275/60r20 Wildpeaks) and have never been happier with my pavement queen.

 

That looks familiar, but the site I'm thinking of let you plug in your rim width and diameter on one side of the calculator. On the other side of the calculator, you could plug in a start tire size, and it would spit out a chunk of nearby tire sizes with the same diameter and how wide/tall they'd measure out (overall)

 

Had to dig a little: The one at TacomaWorld is good too, for giving you comparable sizes, but I was thinking of the one I linked which takes rim and tire specs then drew it up for you like you see at the wheel-size.com site. It also calculates for fender dimensions, wheel well clearance, scrub and rub.

 

Here comes wisdom moment with @EmergencyMaximum :

If you drive slower, you get 2.5+ mpg instead of 1.5+ mpg, AND less chance of hitting that Honda accord. Also, keeping longer buffer in front helps improve mpg even higher because less need for brake application. Genius!

 

That's a big component of MPG as well. I don't know if anyone ever did a hyper-mpg thread, but I messed around with it for a tank of gas last year. Biggest influencers were acceleration habits and conserving momentum when slowing as Emergency mentioned. During my experiment I would not exceed 2,000 rpm when accelerating, never went over 60mph, even on the highway, tried to drift thru every stop sign, stop light to avoid having to accelerate from dead stop and tire inflation to 45psi. It worked, I got 22mpg in 50/50 country road driving and highway where I live. Not an enjoyable driving experience though.

 

Weird, several on these forums say these tires are Great for fuel economy but outside of these forums they get some of the worst reviews regarding fuel economy. Like every single review for them

 

A few reasons for that in my opinion…

1. Those tires come in a lot of different sizes. In some applications they are slightly heavier and “beefier” than stock especially among the small CUV and SUV sizes. So yes those reviews are true to an extent…

2.) OEM worn tires and worn tires in general will always get much better MPG’s. Why people are so shocked when MPG’s go down after new tires is a head scratcher for me…I find it very logical.

3.) Reviews are to be taken with a grain of salt. Yes, Michelin’s are going to suck when they are being driven in slushy snow/ice at 75 mph on a 6k Tundra. Or the review complaining about wear and vibration when he is pulling a trailer at 85 mph. What I mean here is that how the tire is being used is important in determining whether or not it’s a realistic review or not.

 

I had a set of Michelin ltx truck tires (before they switched the name to defender) on a pickup and they were absolutely the best road truck tire I’ve ever had.

 

I use this website/tool when I'm searching tires, offsets etc. It'll give you the wheel weight, height and other goodies. You just need to input your tire info and search away.

 

235/85r16

 

Agreed on Michelin!

I'm running 245/70/17 LTX M/S2 "Eco Focus" for low rolling resistance.