The big benefit isnt really the height gain, it's the gain in side wall so they bag out and give more contact area on the ground which means more grip. So a good experiment would be to jack the vehicle up, drop to say 18 psi and then put ink or paint on the tred and lower the vehicle on to a sheet of paper. Then switch from the 65 to 70 profile and repeat. Check the square cm of contact, times by 4 tyres and bada bing.
I went back to 31s from 32s. 4sp stays locked in more situations. Find my cruising speed slowly creeps up due to slightly better response. Haven’t been off-roading yet but that -15mm might make a difference.
265/65/17 :- Rear - 395mm front - 400mm 265/70/17r:- Rear- 405mm front - 410mm i believe overall was only 10mm difference between 65 and 70 profile changes
Main difference I noticed putting on the 265/70 was that around town my 2014 doesn't like to stay in 5th gear. Easy solution is to simply use S4 around town, then slap the shifter in to D when we hit 100kph. Took about a week for the wife to get used to the new shifting; but now that it's habbit we both just do it automatically. Credit the intuitive gating Toyota uses on their autos for that. Still getting 10.5-11 L/100. We did notice the increased clearance while hitting the tracks; where as before we'd lightly scrape the fuel tank skid, now it doesn't touch at all. Still drag the hitch on steep climbs and push dirt with the front on steep declines. IMO it looks better too; this size seems to fit the wheel wells more proportionally than the stock size. Subjective, I know but who doesn't like to look at their rig?
Keep factory I say , economy goes out for a few mm.. I’m even thinking of keeping the factory ally bar on my prado and just having it powder coated black. So much lighter on the front end
Made the measuring harder than it needed to be and less accurate. Should have just measured from the ground to somewhere on the rim, that way the suspension settling/unsettling doesn’t affect the measurement. If you go to the top of the rim you can use the centre of the wheel as a guide with the tape measure. You also should ensure both tyres are at the same pressure.
That is true that bigger tyres dont give much more clearance, but if you were go to up to 285/70/17 if you were doing hard 4wding, they will have more surface area depending on the tyre you get, so it depends on your personal needs at the cost of fuel economy and power reduction
A 285/70 gives you more clearance than a 265/70 anyway. Obviously a larger tyre is going to give you more clearance and traction. I think he's directly comparing a 65 and a 70 of the same width.
With the 265x 70 you have a better selection of tyre's with tyre's with 3 ply or greater side walls and with this size tyre the speedo is corect But I live in the bush not the city so I prefer them
negligible change for minuscule benefits. if it's a tuff truck by all means a bit more ground clearance is always nice but for the majority of us who daily drive our fourbies it isn't worth it.
