Well ladies and gents...its dead for the time being.

[Ldub]

ROWHARD, you asked if there was a lesson in this for us from the NERVE GAS incident??? You're damn right there is!!! It's called excessive "unsprung weight" in tires!!!

I just did a quick tire weight analysis of the huge NERVE GAS tires, and they weigh nearly 100 lbs each. Remember, our sporty and nimble VX's had OEM tires that weighed only 33--34 lbs each. NERVE GAS put on extremely heavy tires weighing nearly 70 lbs more over OEM or a whopping 280 lbs of extra unsprung weight (tire fat) for all four(4) tires. To further aggravate things, NERVE GAS made absolutely NO modifications to his OEM brakes (according to his list of modifications). Thus, when NERVE GAS asked his poor little VX to stop those big hefty tires in a panic emergency brake stop with the small OEM VX brakes; his VX politely replied "not today, soldier".

After all of those expensive modifications NERVE GAS made to make his VX "look good", it was actually the main cause of its demise. His highly modified VX wouldn't stop for *****, it wouldn't steer for *****; it was only good for hittin' *****.

The NERVE GAS incident is an clear cut example of why I keep harping on not installing excessively heavy tires with high "unsprung weight" on the light-n-nimble VX which has very small OEM brakes. Any aftermarket tire should not way more than 10 lbs over the OEM stock tire weight-- or 44 lbs maximum, if the VX is to be safely used on public roads. Any tire weighing more than 44 lbs on the VX puts your VX at risk, your life at risk, and the lives of the other drivers on the road at risk.

So, when shopping for new tires-- try to keep your maximum individual tire weight at no greater than 44 lbs each per tire and focus on tires that are "P-series" (aka: P-Metric). If you don't, you could easily end up exactly like NERVE GAS did (or worse, with someone being injured).

Excellent examples of lightweight All-Terrain "P-series" tires weighing 44 lbs or less are:

A: PRO-COMP - ALL TERRAIN in P285/60R18 (31.3" O.D./43 lbs).
B: GENERAL - GRABBER AT2 in P275/65R18 (32" O.D./44 lbs).

The lightest weight "Mud-Terrain" tires made are the YOKOHAMA - GEOLANDAR+, although these are not available in the 18" rim size. Riff Raff

So when are you gonna start the church of "less unsprung weight general grabber"?...

We,ve all read it about a million times already, next time, save some bandwidth & post a link to this current rant...