Quote:
Originally Posted by OhioBuckeye
I worked in the auto industry for 38 yrs. & I'm no expert on drive trains but it makes sense to me that 8 in. tires will make the rear axle run faster & your engine will only pull the cart as fast as the engine will let you but 10 in. tires spin the rear axle slower so in turn the engine will spin the rear axle faster because the bigger tires will spin the axle less times. I asked this same question to my salesman when I bought my golf cart & he said bigger tires make no difference. So what's the difference, better ride? I disagree with the salesman. Bigger tires will make your cart run a little faster. The only con I can see is, don't complain if you get pulled over for going over 20 mph.
|
The problem with your whole theory is that that the tires do not control the rate at which the axle spins. The engine and transmission determine how fast the axle spins. Putting on a larger tire means that a point on the outside of the tire will move further in the same amount of time that a point on the outside of a smaller tire will move if the axle spins at the same speed thereby traveling further in the same amount of time.
For example, if the outside diameter of a tire was 12" the the circumference would be approximately, 18.85" A tire with a 14" outside diameter would have a circumference of 22". The 12" tire would travel 18.85 inches every revolution and the 14" tire would travel 22". Assuming that the speed of the revolutions is the same, the larger tire would travel 18.85 inches sooner then the smaller tire. Or, the larger tire would travel 22" in the same time that the smaller tire travels 18.85 inches. Either of which is the definition of going faster.
The argument might be that putting on a larger tire may make the axle turn slower because of the weight. If that's the case, then we'd have to know exactly how much slower the axle turns and exactly how much further a point on the outside of the tire moves to determine whether the cart will go slower, faster or the same. But, in my experience and in the experience of most experts that I've spoken with, larger tires will give you a bit more speed. In other words the amount that the axle is slowed down, if at all, doesn't offset the additional distance the tire will travel.
Another point is that if you put larger tires on the back of the cart and not on the front and your speedometer is attached to the your front tires, no adjustment to the speedometer needs to be made. The speedometer is simply measuring how many revolutions the tire is making and multiplying that to how far each revolution make the cart travel.