“It would cost approximately $164,000 to send one of the Yukon’s wheels (tire included) into orbit aboard SpaceX’s Falcon 9.” – Charley Ladd, road warrior
Our long-term GMC Yukon XL is so big—well, it has “XL” right there in its name, doesn’t it? It has a big 6.2-liter V-8 engine. Its big cabin seats eight comfortably, plus their stuff. And its big 22-inch wheels look damn good, but Charley is right—shipping them into space (current rate: nearly $2K per pound) in one of Elon Musk’s rockets wouldn’t be cheap. We realized this when running our typical entrance exam on the GMC—as we do for every one of our long-term vehicles—and we removed the wheels to measure brake-pad thickness. (It’s a measurement we’ll take again when the GMC leaves our fleet to analyze wear.) The wheel removal proved to be a workout.
Huge rims on SUVs—even from the factory—aren’t news anymore. But we had never specifically sought out the wheels’ particulars, even though we know they’re quite heavy. After road warrior Charley Ladd—who is far from weak—struggled to wrestle the Yukon’s wheels off, we decided to weigh the beasts. As it turns out, each of our long-term Yukon XL Denali’s wheel-and-tire combos crushed the scales at 88 pounds.
As any amateur suspension designer knows, unsprung weight—essentially, anything in the suspension, brakes, and wheels—can have a huge effect on overall vehicle dynamics and wheel control over bumps. The Yukon, therefore, should ride like a broken Radio Flyer wagon, but thanks to the Denali model’s standard Magnetic Ride Control adaptive magnetorheological dampers and the XL body style’s longer wheelbase, the truck rides quite well. So why are we noting the exact weight of the wheels?
- 2015 Ford Expedition / Expedition EL Driven: EcoBoosted Expeditiously
- 2015 GMC Yukon 4WD Tested: Shorter Than the XL, But Otherwise the Same
- GMC Yukon XL Research: Full Pricing, Specs, Reviews, and More
Allow us to paint you a picture: It’s dark out, possibly raining, and one of your Yukon’s 22-inch tires meets a nail. You’re a zillion miles from anywhere, and a tire change is in order. Yep, have fun pig-wrangling that giant chrome wheel and its dead tire up into the trunk—you didn’t have anything back there, did you?—all by your lonesome after installing the 17-inch spare. It hasn’t happened to us yet, but we suggest that any potential or current Yukon owners out there start practicing their power squats—or familiarizing themselves with the location of the OnStar button.
from Car and Driver Blog http://ift.tt/1F4bLKp
via Agya
