32's with 4.56 gears

I'm just wondering who's running 32" tires with 4.56 gears. The search results are a little overwhelming on this, so if this post annoys you, just skip it.

Right now I'm running 33" tires with 4.56 gears and I'm thinking I might get a little better crawling with a little smaller tire. What do you all think of the trade off--bigger tires or better crawling?

Hypothetically speaking.

i wanna run 33.10.50.15 on 4.10 im not a big rock crawler here in bama but i need clearance mmmm its a daily driver post mark birmingham

cjohnson said:

I'm just wondering who's running 32" tires with 4.56 gears. The search results are a little overwhelming on this, so if this post annoys you, just skip it.

Right now I'm running 33" tires with 4.56 gears and I'm thinking I might get a little better crawling with a little smaller tire. What do you all think of the trade off--bigger tires or better crawling?

Hypothetically speaking.

Click to expand...

When you got down 1" in the radius of a tire you wont really gain much (or any noticeable) torque. Stick with the 33's for the extra hair in clearance and start thinking about 4:1
Now if you were to go to 31" tire or 30" tire, that'd be different, but on the other hand you'd loose out on the clearance.

That makes sense--I don't want to go back to 31's, but I wasn't sure if I would notice the difference with 32's. Thanks for the feedback.

1" is definitely a noticable drop.
.5" would be noticable as well.
You'd be amazed how much more you drag on when changing just that little bit.

i'm happy with 32's and 4.56's

cjohnson said:

I'm just wondering who's running 32" tires with 4.56 gears. The search results are a little overwhelming on this, so if this post annoys you, just skip it.

Right now I'm running 33" tires with 4.56 gears and I'm thinking I might get a little better crawling with a little smaller tire. What do you all think of the trade off--bigger tires or better crawling?

Hypothetically speaking.

Click to expand...

32's work fine on the highway with 4.56 gears, but that's not what you're really asking. There's no way it would be worth it to decrease you're ground clearance to gain a very small increase in crawl ratio. Ground clearance is nearly always more important than crawl ratio, unless you're crawl ratio is way out of line with huge tires and tall gears. You would be gaining 3% in crawl ratio, which is insignificant at slow trail speed, but you'd be loosing 1/2" in ground clearance, or between 5-6%. Loosing 5% of an important number to gain 3% of a relatively unimportant number.......no way.

you might notice it a little zippier on the street by going down to 32s, but the difference in crawl ratio would be un-noticeable. consider 33x10.50s, you will keep your ground clearance and be a little gentler on your D35

Good advice here.....to add to it, I ran 32's with 4:56's and they worked well, 2 yrs ago I jumped to 285/16's and noticed a little power loss on the paved hills, but the added ground clearance and crack filling capability of the larger tire was well worth occasionally needed to pull the shifter out of OD to make it up the steeper grades.....keep in mind, I drive an 89 XJ with the weight of HD bumpers, sliders, armor, fs spare and 198K miles on the motor.