I have a 2004 Sportsmans 700. I am putting new tires on it and like the ITP MudLites. I am curious if it is OK to put size 25x9 on the front while going with size 26x11 on the rear. Will the one inch tire size difference adversely effect the machine, drive train, or anything else? Thanks for any info!!

 

It's a good idea to stick w/ the same size front and rear, unless the machine came from the factory w/ miss-matched sized tires

 

Why would you want to do that? You would surely break something eventually.

 

I would suggest the same as 500HO and stick with what you had as the transmission and gearing were set up to work with what was on it from the factory. BUT having a 700 tire size will be less of an issue!

 

I wish someone would try it as an experiment so we can find out what happens when the 4x4 engages and the rear wheels are going 4% faster. Maybe the front slows down and the back speeds up at the same time. That would make for a very interesting ride. [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-wink.gif[/img]

 

25's on the front and 26's on the back. The front tires would rotate faster due to their smaller diameter so the front hubs would probably never enguage because if i do beleive the front does not enguage untill the rear end has a 1/4 or 3/4 speed rotation difference from the front . The rear tires would always be spinning slower than the front. That is unless the rears really were spining hard. even then i don't thing the front would catch because the rear tires would be going too fast.

 

Maybe the rear wheels would spin really fast then the front end would try to lock in and explode. I've never seen one grenade before and I try hard to avoid it. I can't afford to experiment on something that expensive.

 

The front diff is geared higher than the rear diff.Shorter front tires would possibly make the awd always engaged when the switch is on,which would make for very heavy steering.I would stick with the same height tire front and rear to avoid awd problems.

 

i would keep same size dia. tire front and back. you siad xtr's in title then mentioned mud lites in post. you do realize there is a big differnce between these tires right?

 

<div class="FTQUOTE"><begin quote>I would keep same size dia. tire front and back.</end quote></div> Yep, I would too. With the front having to rotate faster than the rear to cover the same distance it's bound to cause problems somewhere.