Curious about the narrower tire for winter? Do you mean comfort-wise?
I actually prefer a narrower, dedicated snow for winter, so maybe it works with the A/T's!
Hope it works out![]()
A narrower tire is generally better for snow. And a narrower tire is generally better for off-roading, too. A wide tire tends to interact with more of the offroad surface (less "Leave No Trace") than a narrow tire. When aired down, a tire's tread generally expands in the forward-rearward direction and not in the side-to-side direction. So a narrower tire leaves a more narrow strip of disturbed surface than a wider tire does, for the same air pressure, tread, etc. If you expect to encounter deep sand or swampy bogs, a wider tire may help with floatation, but it'll depend on the details.
Similarly, a narrow tire is generally better for wind resistance and rolling resistance when aired up. So when we take the R2 on road trips in the winter, the narrower tire may give us better overall efficiency compared with the AS tires that came with the vehicle or compared with wider tires that we might have optioned. I said "in winter" specifically because I'm likely to lower the air pressure of these tires when we're likely to encounter slick roads, and I don't know how much that might impact our efficiency.
The reason this tire *might* prove to give overall worse range is that the wheel/tire combination is heavier, more of the mass is concentrated at the outer rim of the wheelset, and the compound has a higher rolling resistance. Some of that higher rolling resistance can be mitigated by allowing the tire to flex less by increasing the air pressure. But I can't do anything about the higher mass and higher mass concentration at the outer rim.