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37" military tires, thoughts? Experience?
- Thread starter nedceifus
- Start date
The bottom ones I have used quite a bit. Decent off road tire. Decent on road. Beyond awful on ice.
For the price a good tire IMHO
For the price a good tire IMHO
They are freaking heavier than sin with the run flats in the and being a 16.5 they are an odd ball but they do work off road ok. They are cheap but I ended up staying away from them as the bead lock system isn't the safest on the road.
I've had all three, in some sort, and been around many more. All (except one set) with near new tread, military takeoffs.
The MT's have an aggressive pattern, so ok in deep mud and rocks but bad in ice/snow. Also, most of these are from the 90's, the newest are still probably 10+ years old now. The rubber in the set I had was really hard, but they were old (they were built in the mid 90's, had these probably 10 years ago, but they still sell them as "takeoffs"). Honestly, I'd skip these for sure.
I had two sets of the Baja T/A's. Both sets were at least a reasonable manufacture date (2010 or so). They wore well, put ~20K on each set and I don't think I wore halfway through either. Not bad, what you would expect. Decent offroad.
The MT/R I actually didn't have in a 16.5, but in a 15. Still a 37" tall tire, even ran them in my Blazer/buggy, but same tread pattern. No complaints on those at all, plus they're the newer and most recent military 16.5's.
They're definitely the cheap way to 37's on a trail rig. If you spend much time at highway speed, you'll hate ALL of the military tires.
The MT's have an aggressive pattern, so ok in deep mud and rocks but bad in ice/snow. Also, most of these are from the 90's, the newest are still probably 10+ years old now. The rubber in the set I had was really hard, but they were old (they were built in the mid 90's, had these probably 10 years ago, but they still sell them as "takeoffs"). Honestly, I'd skip these for sure.
I had two sets of the Baja T/A's. Both sets were at least a reasonable manufacture date (2010 or so). They wore well, put ~20K on each set and I don't think I wore halfway through either. Not bad, what you would expect. Decent offroad.
The MT/R I actually didn't have in a 16.5, but in a 15. Still a 37" tall tire, even ran them in my Blazer/buggy, but same tread pattern. No complaints on those at all, plus they're the newer and most recent military 16.5's.
They're definitely the cheap way to 37's on a trail rig. If you spend much time at highway speed, you'll hate ALL of the military tires.
@K30Blazer Why? Never heard of a problem with the beadlocks on a humvee.
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Also there are different load ranges in the MTR's and BFG's, they can be load range D or E and they use different wheels also.
I think I'll try a set out. Don't want to, but in order to go to a tire I want I need wheels, & SRW front hubs.... The Burb needs to prove its worth for a while before I drop that kind of coin into wheels & tires.
My buddy has them on his DD 86 blazer. It sees mostly road time and the occasional mud hole. He must like them because he is on his second set.
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
Okay so let's clear this up, you are talking about using civilian beadlocks on a military tire? If so I still don't see where you get a hazard other than the civilian beadlocks are not for on road use with any tire. The military tire with military wheels are safe and will not have a problem with the beadlocks. I will go further and say I don't believe you will have a beadlock problem with civilian wheels. The only way I see your 5 degree bead being a problem would be if someone built 16.5 wheels out of some 15" or 16" wheels
In my application I will be using 32 bolt Humvee beadlocks with a PVC insert. I also intend on keeping my 42" TSL's for heavy trail use. The 37's will primarily be a street/local wheeling tire with the intention of swapping them out for trips to more extreme wheeling locations. I live in Nebraska so just cruising my 40's to Moab is not applicable. With that said, 17" aluminum beadlocks & a quality tire are a goal for down the road. Like $4000 down the road.
Here is what I would like to try to make this more livable on the street. I'd like to balance my wheels first with no tire. Spot weld weights onto the wheels all permanent like. Mark the 2 wheel halves so that you bolt them together the same every time. I think this process would eliminate 1/2 of your wheel/tire combo balancing issues.
I ran the OZ (Goodyear) radials for a number of years. Real nice tire below 50MPH! Ran lots of airsoft in them and worked many times on how they were mounted on the wheels without it ever being real smooth. For comparison, they were smoother than TSLs, but worse than my current radial swampers (even though the SSR is bigger and heavier).
I've marked the 2 piece wheels and messed with rotating tire on rim and also inner wheel on outer wheel. I put a dial indicator near the tire and rotate it, putting masking tape in multiple locations to measure the runout. Then I do the same for the wheel. If they match, the wheel turns on the rim. There is some variation in how the wheel can go together, so having the data tells you which way to push things. This minimizes issues from the mounting, but in my experience is only good for about 25% of the problem. If a tire isn't round, it can't run smooth at high speed. Some of the Oz had 1/2" of runout. I'm happy if I have tires within 1/4"
I've marked the 2 piece wheels and messed with rotating tire on rim and also inner wheel on outer wheel. I put a dial indicator near the tire and rotate it, putting masking tape in multiple locations to measure the runout. Then I do the same for the wheel. If they match, the wheel turns on the rim. There is some variation in how the wheel can go together, so having the data tells you which way to push things. This minimizes issues from the mounting, but in my experience is only good for about 25% of the problem. If a tire isn't round, it can't run smooth at high speed. Some of the Oz had 1/2" of runout. I'm happy if I have tires within 1/4"
I run the 37 bajas.... rig'll do 80 on the parkway... great tire.... unobtainable these days, but, hey... 
Yep, a lot of them did.
I just don't understand why so many people are scared of 16.5's these days. They aren't a safety issue, you just can't run them low on air without potentially losing a bead. There's nothing wrong with running a 16.5 down the highway with family riding along, it was perfectly safe back in the day and it's perfectly safe now.
