so today i raced a tahoe similar to mine it was a rolling 20 and on take off he got a quick jump ahead but only went about half a truck ahead and i kept up in the same place..how much of a difference does it actually make in the wheel size? his had some stock 2012 silverado 20s and i have some 24s i will install my lt headers this friday but you guys thiink that with the headers it will keep up better with the same tahoe?

will also get tune and efans pretty soon

 

So you have some issues to deal with here. Wheel and tire weight will factor in dramatically when talking about ET. The rate is more or less for every 6.25lbs per wheel and tire you add you will lose a tenth on your ET. So lets say your 24" wheels and tires weigh 100lbs each vs his 20" wheels and tires which weigh 80lbs each. That equates to .3+ in the 1/4 you could go faster with smaller lighter wheels. Next long tubes won't necessarily make you faster like mine, because my otherwise stock 4.8 needed more backpressure. To give you an example in stock form on 16" wheels with 29.5" tires my truck ran .6 faster than with 20" tahoe wheels with 32" tires and LTs. Now if you are making more power(not hard to do) than my 4.8 you may see gains from LTs. However, one thing is absolutely for sure; those 24s are slowing you down a ton. Swapping for 16" wheels would make a huge difference while anything will help even going down to 20s.

 

thanks for the detailed explanation exactly what i was looking for

 

I race on both 22's and 17's. the 22's are 105 lbs a piece with tires (8 lug) and the 17's are 55 lbs. I picked up 2 mph in the 1/8 with the smaller rims.

 

My truck definitely feels alot snappier with my stock size wheels vs my 20's.
However I felt a pretty noticeable performance gain with my LT's, I think your next race will be tighter.

 

havent raced the tahoe yet but i got my lt headers on a while ago and i got some stock 17s steelies for winter..installed my bb tune today and man what a difference it made!