37" military tires, thoughts? Experience?

[ryoken]

I didn't know there was any difference.... I run 95% tread, D-rated take-offs.. one of the best tires I've ever run.. blow the KM2's I was running away, hands down...

wear like iron, good in rain/snow.. decent in mud... well built and balance well...

tho, I do kind of regret not going with the goodyears, as they made up 90% of the take-offs and are still readily available.. the Baja's are pretty much all gone...

 

[Blazintrails66]

16.5 inch rims use a 5 degree taper on their bead. all full inch sizes...15,16, ect. use a 15 degree taper. the 16.5's will blow off the rim at low pressures....below 15 or so.

The beadlock just doesn't bit the same way. They were never really intended to be a rock crawling tire. That said, they are cheap, plentiful and I know a lot of guys who run them with no problems. For me, the purpose of my rig was to be able to drive it to moab and wheel it and drive it back. I felt more confident in a conventional purpose built tire rim combo.

Now, I am not saying they won't work. They most definitely will, it was just for carrying my family in the truck and spending long freeway miles, I wanted something that was more designed for that. If you can say a 40" tire is designed for highway lol

I run these and the 36" bias ply's.
First the 37's radials.... Heavy!! One weighs as much as two bfg 35" Mt's. And that's tire only. Off road they worked great, on road had g9od manners too. My rig '72k5 is over 62oolbs trail ready. So an 16.5 has bad rap.but while I ran them on alum rim & crawled them commonly at 12psi, I have had them as low as 9psi on the trail with never even burped.. the 36''s a different animal- handling Sucks, off-road less than stellar, until I cut them!!! Used a 4 1/2 angle grinder with a fresh 1/4" thick disk and started cutting the knobs and the results were night & day, in tire wear, noise, temp. Oh and they started working much much better off-road. As for my success airing down with 16.5's- I start with a clean acid etched aluminium wheel and the trick is to use an 8.25 wide week to add a bit of pinch to it, and never had any problem with them burping or coming off the beads. So there ya go, that's my experience

16.5 inch rims use a 5 degree taper on their bead. all full inch sizes...15,16, ect. use a 15 degree taper. the 16.5's will blow off the rim at low pressures....below 15 or so.

The beadlock just doesn't bit the same way. They were never really intended to be a rock crawling tire. That said, they are cheap, plentiful and I know a lot of guys who run them with no problems. For me, the purpose of my rig was to be able to drive it to moab and wheel it and drive it back. I felt more confident in a conventional purpose built tire rim combo.

Now, I am not saying they won't work. They most definitely will, it was just for carrying my family in the truck and spending long freeway miles, I wanted something that was more designed for that. If you can say a 40" tire is designed for highway lol

 

[Cruz89K5]

I've sold and ran them all. Avoid the MT's unless they're cheap. Not a bad tire, but the other two are much better. They are decent offroad and great on road. For the money being a 37" radial they're hard to beat.

 

[HankScorpio]

I am running the 37" bfg baja takeoff. Probably 3/4 tread plus. They replaced 36x14.5x16.5 swamper radials on my 1991 v3500 crew cab. I like them alot better than the swampers. The swampers were too wide for my taste. I ran them for years and had grown used to them. When I put the 37" bfg on it was a great upgrade. Quieter and drove nicer on and off road. In the snow and ice they are no worse than the big swampers. In deep snow they cut alot better than my wide ones. The forward bite in snow is pretty decent but stopping isn't great. Not horrible stopping though. I have a big heavy truck so I drive accordingly. I have all ways drove a big tire truck so not sure how I would compare road noise, I don't think they are bad at all.

 

[ryoken]

my Baja's are pretty damn quiet, maybe not quiet as silent as my KM2's where, but I can run 80 on the parkway with the windows open and it's barely noticeable...


funny thing is, I had some 95%'s swapped out on the front recently, and the tire guys called me up that afternoon and said he had 2 guys that wanted to buy the ones I took off, sidewall patches and all.. I told him no thanks, there's a reason I bought a dozen of em.. good thing, cuz they're like hens teeth nowadays...

 

[AJMBLAZER]

Be careful with these tires. Remember some of them are getting very old. A kid who works for me bought a set of the 37 inch Goodyear MT's a few weeks back. I showed him how to read the age code on the side wall and the things are from the 90s.

Even the new Goodyears and BFG's could be getting long in the tooth. The military bought a crap ton of them about a decade ago and has been using up that supply ever since.
There is also no guarantee that before they put it on a Humvee it didn't spend years sitting in the sunlight in Texarkana, Texas in the vast parking lot full of those tires I saw in 2011. Most of them were around 3 to 4 years old at that time and had been sitting there most of that time.

 

[ryoken]

true that.. I got Berg to hook me up with the freshest stuff he had, and even than, mine are all in the 8 to 10 yr old range... they are pretty perfect, just a couple have a few dry rot cracks.. not like my 38 TSL's for sure.. pretty sure the Baja's are unobtainable these days anyway..

 

[AJMBLAZER]

Yep, you got them while the getting was good several years ago.