tire recommendation

What are your typical driving conditions? This will help us make recommendations.

Southern US. Lot's of rain. Heat. The truck is a 4x4 club cab but is operated 99% highway miles. Looking for best mileage and quiet running.

Here's a curiosity:

I was looking at the tires recommended on Tirerack.com for an '03 Dodge

2500, quad cab, 4x4. One of the tires they list, Goodyear Wrangler SilentArmor, looks like it has really good ratings in all categories. The load range specs look good with each tire being able to hold 2337 lbs at a maximum of 44 psi.

The '97 truck has a plate on the doorjam that specifies inflating front tires to 65 psi and rears to 80 psi. What would happen to the handling if I installed a tire inflated to 44 psi? Would that screw the handling?

Ray:

The handling would be unaffected but your load carrying capacity would decrease considerably. The 80 psi nameplate is for a Load Range E tire which your truck came equipped with from the factory. The 44 psi tire that you found on TireRack.com is a Load Range C or D. Not really an issue unless you are planning on carrying or towing some hefty loads. If you have a fifth-wheel trailer and the pin weight is substantial, you are cautioned to stay with the Load Range E tire.

Hope this helps!

Mike

I've never liked Goodyears either. Might be the tires I've had and some styles are better. I've had great luck with Michelins. More expensive but seem to last longer. The LTX M/S are great tires. On my Durango I now have the Cross Terrains and love them.

I also don't like Goodyear tires. I'm partial to BF Goodrich tires - they provide exceptional tread life, are reasonably priced and even the aggressive treads are fairly quite. I've had Mud Terrains, All Terrains and Long Trail tires on different vehicles and never had a problem with any of them. The Mud Terrains are definitely too aggressive and the All Terrains are probably too aggressive for what you're looking for. They make even more streetable tires than the Long Trail, but I don't remember the names.

To check your speedometer, you can reset your trip odometer at a highway mileage marker, then drive for a distance >> Personally, I have never like Goodyear tires. I have run both the

I run the Michelins on mine with no complaints really. although these are not the best off road but your stating, like my situation, that your driving is 99% highway

I agree....LTX M/S is what I run now. Ran Goodyear on the Chevy

4x4 I had years ago and never recalled being satisfied with them.

I'll really like the Long Trail T/A's on my Santa Fe. If I had an unlimited tire budget I'd have a set on my Dodge.

I get about 75k miles out of them with a "spirited" driving style in a

3800 lbs FWD SUV. Water handling is awesome until they're about 80% worn out. I do keep them rotated. Rebalancing has never been a big issue (installers at Discount Tire keep putting the wrong weights on it. They don't recognize the "USE TEH ACURA STYLE WEIGHTS" logo on the rims I guess)..

If you've got another 30-40% to spend on tires, you can pretty much expect 100-120k service (warning: if you like to burn out, they will lose tread FAST) out of a set of Michelin LTX M/S. They're not great in the dirt/sand, and fairly soft/thin sidewalls, but they're an AWESOME tire on pavement.

JS

Ed H. wrote:

I've never liked Michelin tires. I had a Michelin tire come apart on my old S-10 pickup. A flap of tread just peeled away from the tire casing. Good thing I was driving slow, it was a front tire. The last Michelin tires I owned were the ones the factory installed on my '99 Ram. I only got 25,000 miles out of them. I sure hope they changed their ways in the past 8 years. As per everyone's advice here I just put 4 Michelin LTX M/S tires on my wife's Expedition. Peer pressure sucks. You guys better be right. ;^)

I've got a set of Kelly-Springfield Safari Trex on my 97 Dakota 2WD. They've been great so far and seem to be wearing very little.

YMMV

Ken

Yeah, damn those Michelin Tires. I only got 70k out of this set and only rotated them once. Workin on my 2nd set of replacements and damn, Michelins again. When will I ever learn. :o)

FMB (North Mexico) (('03 2500 HO QC)) (((Laramie 4wd LB 125k miles)))