the strai came from the electric motor on the freeway. I could hear it whine out. not a good sound.

 

Because 20" chrome wheels are HEAVY!!! I had 19" chrome on my Cadillac and they were way heavier than the 18" I have on my TCH.

 

naw, these are not chrome. its polished billet wheels. one and a half pounds heavier then stock. the inertia makes the car strain. If your interested there for sale cheap.

 

Maybe I'm missing something, but I would think the inertia of the 3,600#'s worth of CAR would be the important factor, not the extra 1.5#'s of inertia at the wheel end.

 

Interesting.

 

It's rotational inertia, where the mass of at the outer edge increases the energy in the system. Think "gyroscope". In a rotating system, for given RPM, the further from the center of rotation the mass is, the more energy is contained. This impacts both speeding the system up and in slowing it down.

BTW, I recall a few years back a "Popular Science" proposal of a gyroscope-based hybrid concept - with that energy storage and release mechanism being more suitable for heavy vehicles. The idea was to use flywheels to capture the energy in slowing the vehicle down, and then use it to accelerate the vehicle back to speed. Issues with bearings and the 'gyroscope effect' on turning and road surface variations seemed to be impossible to overcome.