Tire chains

[floater]

How much to short will 15.5 x38 chains be on 16.9 x38 tires?

 

[M Nut]

Not much. Worse case add a few links to the ends to extend them a little, and you should be good to go.

 

[504]

It will be the width that will cause your troubles.

 

[Brian G. NY]

(quoted from post at 18:37:23 02/07/21) It will be the width that will cause your troubles.

Exactly,,,,,I went to Laclede Tire Chain site and found that for double ring chains the 16.9 cross links are 4 inches longer than the 15.5 cross links and both sizes have the same number of cross links per tire. I would say because the 15.5 chains have much shorter cross links, the side chains would have to be a lot longer to fit on the 16.9 tires and would require a few extra cross links to make up the difference. It might work but you won't have much cross link over the tread.

There is quite a lot of info on the Laclede site but I found it a little tuff to navigate around on there.