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Time to buy some tires...

Tire choice

  • Total voters
    37
campfire

campfire

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It's time for me to buy some new truck tires (4). I'm looking at highway and overlanding miles, not planning on much rock crawling. I want durability and longevity, and I do not want road noise or balancing issues. I doubt I'll do much snow driving with these, but it's always a possibility.

Size will be 285/75R16.

I'm pretty happy with the Cooper Discoverer AT3 tires that I've been rocking for years now (since they first replaced the ATR series in 2011), and I'm thinking of getting them again. But I know there are other good ones out there. I hear good things about the General Grabber AT2 I hear medium reviews on the BFG KO2, that it's better than the original, but that may or may not be good enough depending on who writes the review. A quick scan of Discount Tire Direct reveals that the Coopers are the cheapest ones this week (from them), though that changes periodically.

BFG KO2 ($1000 shipped)
General Grabber AT2 ($825 shipped)
Cooper AT3 ($800 - $70 gift card shipped)


Anybody have hands-on comparisons of these tires? Any others I should consider for this purpose? Any particular tire vendors I should look at?

:ears:
 
Gone through 3 sets of the BFGs. They get my vote
 
Have you looked at BBWheels online?
That's where I got my Nittos. They were the best price shipped, no tax
 
AT3's are US made, which says a lot to me. I've always had great success with coopers. I've also heard they new BFG's are great. I've ran their old stuff, and they wore like iron. They were great for gravel roads too.
 
bent72 said:
Gone through 3 sets of the BFGs. They get my vote
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Does that mean they wear out 3 times as fast? :dunno:

bent72 said:
Have you looked at BBWheels online?
That's where I got my Nittos. They were the best price shipped, no tax
Click to expand...

Cool. I will look more into different vendors when I have nailed down which set I prefer.
 
GWeakland620 said:
AT3's are US made, which says a lot to me. I've always had great success with coopers. I've also heard they new BFG's are great. I've ran their old stuff, and they wore like iron. They were great for gravel roads too.
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I haven't. The ATRs on Big Blue were junk. My brother's ATRs were also junk. My AT3s were great. Dad's AT3s still are great. I have 2 more AT3s sitting in the barn for Big Blue (when the time comes). So call Cooper 63% great.

For the old BFGs I've heard great things and terrible things. Not sure what to think.
 
campfire said:
I haven't. The ATRs on Big Blue were junk. My brother's ATRs were also junk. My AT3s were great. Dad's AT3s still are great. I have 2 more AT3s sitting in the barn for Big Blue (when the time comes). So call Cooper 63% great.

For the old BFGs I've heard great things and terrible things. Not sure what to think.
Click to expand...
Never had any issues with them

Is Craigslist a viable option for your location
 
bent72 said:
Keep looking. Seems like a common size for take offs
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I'll also add that I'm not thrilled with takeoffs. I've run through dozens of takeoffs, in not too long of a time span. At various points, 4 of them delaminated and left me on the side of the road. That's inconvenient, but since 2 of them were on the same trip (within the same hour, even) and I only had one spare, it's now hard for me to forget that experience.

I'm pretty adamant about not running cracked tires anymore. The cost of downtime is too great.

And more generally, the cost of mounting & balancing eats away a portion of the cost savings from buying used tires if they're not already on appropriate rims. I'm still running takeoffs on 2 of the trucks, but I won't buy another set unless the stars line up just right.
 
KO2s are great tires, had them on my last Jeep. The current Jeep just got Duratracs as I've been wanting to try them and I love them. So much better in the wet stuff because of the siping and way less road noise. They balanced out great and are an awesome "more aggressive" all-terrain and the prices can be pretty good (plus they started out as a commercial branded tire which means easy availability of load rates tires).

If your rig will be 50% or more on-road miles, take a serious look at them.
 
My last set of BFG KOs had 61k miles on them when I replaced last year with a fresh set of K02s. 285/75R16s too. This is on a 2000 Dodge Ram 2500 4x4 Cummins. So its a fair amount of weight on the frontend. 98% highway miles. Occasional dirt roads. Never aired down below 25 psi for anything with that truck. Never really had any problems with them.
 
So I guess the M/T Baja Claws are out. I liked the old BFG all terrains had them on Blackie for over 5 years and they were still on it last summer. The kid put the spare on the rear drivers.

13895100.jpg
 
Appropriately application is key here. Bfg tends to get poor reviews when they are the wrong load rating on the truck. Correct application nets great results.

Cooper tires have really developed in to competitors to the bigger manufacturers.

Have you looked into Toyo? I am a convert over to the RT. Superb tires.
 
I'd split my vote between the Cooper AT3's and their offbrand Mastercraft ATX. I put some ATX's on my Silverado in October '15. I drive 45 miles each way every day and they're somewhere past 25,000-30,000 miles and wearing great. Well over 50% tread left. Great on road and do great in rain and slippery road conditions. The bit of off highway stuff I've done has been good. Lots of traction and they keep going along in the not-deep-mud situations I've been in.
 
Hercules Terra Trac T/G Max. Put a set on my managers truck here at the farm. He puts on a lot of road miles going back and forth to the fields (about 8500 acres) He's surprised with how quiet they are. But the outside lugs are open enough that he has traction in the mud
 
Almost all of the major tire companies are releasing a hybrid tire now. With a tighter center tread void for the road and a larger void outside for off-road. They seem to be a decent compromise for trucks that get used for both
 
I can't comment on the KO2's, but I'm on my second set of KO's, and I don't have anything bad to say about them, at least in terms of longevity and noise.

Hard to tell in the truck where noise is coming from (no insulation/sound deadening), but I'm quite certain the tires aren't "noisy". Certainly not like the more aggressive tires you hear on other rigs. I would expect the KO2's to be even quieter, since anymore that is what people generally want, especially on an AT.

Nearly every time I'm off pavement (generally potholed logging roads, some mud and snow) I run them at 20PSI, and they are no worse for wear. Aside from some tread slicing from the large sharp rock used on a few stretches of steep "road", they seem to wear very well. Truck generally always sits outside, driven very infrequently, and the last set of KO's started leaking at around 8-9 years, from very small cracks between all the lugs. I'm assuming that is to be expected of most tires as they age, since every manufacturer I've seen anymore recommends ~8 year replacement regardless of mileage. I can't begin to guess how many miles were on those tires, but at 8 years they weren't even halfway worn. I'd guess 30K.
 
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