November 10, 2006

Dubs on Your Tow Vehicle? Read This First.

This weekend the Wakeboard Report Crew went out and test drove an eye-catching 2002 Chevrolet Tahoe in Gunmetal Grey. Sounds pretty standard so far, right? Well this particular sled was rolling on a set of deuce-deuce's! So we pulled into the dealership where it was being displayed, and The Wakeboard Report Crew's wife dropped me us off and went to do her grocery shopping across the street. But as she circled around, she caught a glimpse of the wheels and stopped to laugh. "Oh God. So thats why you wanted to test drive this one huh? I see." Does she not know that 22's make a person instantly famous? Add tinted windows to the picture and the owner probably heads up a multinational firm of some important kind.

I just finished up a 1700 mile road trip in a Chevrolet Tahoe and was astounded at the vehicle's performance. So I began plotting to get back into one as soon as possible, and after several flyby's I decided that this 22's-equipped Tahoe needed further exploration in the form of a long test drive and 8 bone-shattering car salesmen handshakes.

The Chevrolet Tahoe is a truck that essentially drives itself - with little wandering and fade. For a vehicle based on a pickup truck platform, it rides very nicely, and with a tight turning radius makes slow towing maneuvers quite a bit easier. On my recent road trip, I found that in just about all road conditions the Tahoe was remarkably easy to pilot. But almost instantly I was surprised at how squirrelly this truck drove with 22's equipped. It wanted to dart off in every direction, sometimes without much warning; making the need to babysit it a matter of life or death. I could not even loosen my grip on the steering wheel long enough to safely lower the volume on the stereo, and decide if that dash chatter sounded more like a rattle snake or a dental visit. I got the impression that the vehicle spent its life on the roads of Boston, slamming from pothole to pothole on its very cool but very impractical low profile wheels. This wasn't a case of simple cab shake - the dashboard sounded like someone had emptied a pocketful of change into it.

Attach a boat, and I can imagine big trouble. I advise against equipping your tow vehicle with low profile & oversize wheel setups, particularly wide ones. Towing is difficult enough without the added feeling of instability and unpredictability found in driving a vehicle with such an extremely non-stock wheel configuration. I am usually an advocate for customization, but here is one type of customization that actually isn't appropriate for many people who spend time towing: huge, flat, wide wheels. It changes the handling of a vehicle with a long wheelbase like that of the Tahoe, drastically.

Ludacris was wrong. You can lose with 22's. Control, primarily.

Posted by erik