Oh, you've gotta love the East Orlando freecycling group. Somebody advertised four 14" Honda Civic tires with hubcaps. Since the tires on my Hatchback have been failing in new and iteresting ways, we've been sharing six tires between these two cars. So we jumped at this.
Sure, they were dirty. And they were mismatched. But they were complete, with the steel rims. The hubcaps are in poor condition, but I'll just freecycle those to someone else or discard them.
But... my cars use 13" wheels. Now what have I done?
No biggie. The bolts still fit. Either car can take 14" wheels with no problem. But bigger wheels are harder to turn (although only very slightly in this case), and harder to stop. And I'm really concerned about efficiency, lately.
Brain Spark! I'll put the bigger wheels on the back of each car. The smaller 13" wheels can go up front, where the power is actually delivered. Torque will still be delivered as expected, the car will have a slight downwards slope that might improve my coasting, and the bigger wheels will also have more angular momentum, further improving my coasting. And my wheels can be pressure-paired (right now, one wheel is rated for lower pressure than the other three).
I'm going to wait on this until I'm done with this tank of gas. I just replaced one scalloped tire with a reasonable one from the EV, and I'd like to see what my mileage looks like before I go messing with it.