Get your minds out of the gutter....this is about tires. This could be helpful for those with kits, or considering tire choices in the midst of ordering a kit. All you TG owners are already right-sized, but there are a lot of kitted rides out there with a variation of rear tire sizes that may benefit from this.
I have and older Lehman Renegade and it came with the monster 245/60R15 tires. I later installed a Baker 6-speed and these two things combined geared the machine much too high. I did not want to spend the money or take the time to invest in a new primary drive sprocket or tear it apart and change either of the belt sprockets. I was considering new rear tires anyway, so I went to the box stock TG tire, which is a 205/65R15. Doing the math on these tires, the 205 is about an inch smaller in diameter at 26 where the 245 was closer to 27. I figured this would drop my RPM's buy around 170-or-so at any given speed....which it did. 170 doesn't sound like much, but it made a world of difference in my ride. I never could get comfortable in 6th. gear until I ran up above 75 and 80 was perfect. I can now run along at 2900-3000 in 6th. gear at 70 and can ride the 2-lanes in 5th. gear all day long without having it in a strain up the hills.
It hardly dropped my ride height by any measurable amount and it really, really did make the ride more comfortable and nothing really cost me a thing since I was getting new tires anyway.
I have and older Lehman Renegade and it came with the monster 245/60R15 tires. I later installed a Baker 6-speed and these two things combined geared the machine much too high. I did not want to spend the money or take the time to invest in a new primary drive sprocket or tear it apart and change either of the belt sprockets. I was considering new rear tires anyway, so I went to the box stock TG tire, which is a 205/65R15. Doing the math on these tires, the 205 is about an inch smaller in diameter at 26 where the 245 was closer to 27. I figured this would drop my RPM's buy around 170-or-so at any given speed....which it did. 170 doesn't sound like much, but it made a world of difference in my ride. I never could get comfortable in 6th. gear until I ran up above 75 and 80 was perfect. I can now run along at 2900-3000 in 6th. gear at 70 and can ride the 2-lanes in 5th. gear all day long without having it in a strain up the hills.
It hardly dropped my ride height by any measurable amount and it really, really did make the ride more comfortable and nothing really cost me a thing since I was getting new tires anyway.
utergreet: thanks again.
