New tires for 99 wrangler

It worked, but you only gave it 17 minutes.

You should consider a 30x9.50 or 31x10.50. You can fit either of these on the factory rims, and the gearing will not be affected too greatly (it will be affected, and you will notice, but it should be livable).

Another tire choice that you did not mention, and is sold at Costco, is the BFG All Terrain KO. This tire will give excellent road service, and it is a great all around offroad tire. There are better offroad tires, but these come with issues for the highway. The AT will load up with mud, and this is about the only problem area they have. If the majority of your offroading is in dry areas, the mud shouldn't be an issue for you. You can airdown the BFGs to 10 pounds to increase the traction and floatation, and this will help with most of the shortcomings related to mud anyhow.

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It worked, but you only gave it 17 minutes.

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You should consider a 30x9.50 or 31x10.50. You can fit either of these on the factory rims, and the gearing will not be affected too greatly (it will be affected, and you will notice, but it should be livable).

Another tire choice that you did not mention, and is sold at Costco, is the BFG All Terrain KO. This tire will give excellent road service, and it is a great all around offroad tire. There are better offroad tires, but these come with issues for the highway. The AT will load up with mud, and this is about the only problem area they have. If the majority of your offroading is in dry areas, the mud shouldn't be an issue for you. You can airdown the BFGs to 10 pounds to increase the traction and floatation, and this will help with most of the shortcomings related to mud anyhow.

I'd suggest the original Goodyear Wrangler Radial tire in size 235-75-R15.

It's a great tire on road, does just fine on dirt roads and snow. It'll give you a bigger foorprint, raise your Jeep about an inch, and give you all year/all road driving ability. I've got 40,000 on mine now, time to change them, but they have been wonderful all these years. I'm going to get the same thing this time, right before the snow falls.

I had Coopers on my Firebird. Great tires, but they are soft and don't last long. They handle great though.

Stick with a 75 series tire if you can.

Best all around tire for street primary Jeeps I've found to be the BFG All Terrain. Very durable & long tread life. I have the Wrangler GSAs on my Grand Cherokee and have had moderate luck with them. Reasonable tread wera on highway, but prone to off-road punctures.

Can you give some detail on the "highway issues" with the BFG AT's. I have an '03 Wrangler X with the 225 GSA's looking to upgrade to BFG 30".

Most of my daily commute is highway.

Thanks, Rich...

In my experience there really aren't any highway issues with them, aside from a bit of tread noise on some surfaces. Bear in mind they have a 3 ply sidewall and may ride more harshly than what you're used to, particularly at high inflation pressures. This isn't to an extreme degree. Off road they are far more robust than the car-based GSAs.

I've had them on Cherokees, YJs and now on my resto CJ and they are just superb tires in everything but really serious mud, at which time they load up and are fairly loose. Another real plus I've found is that with proper inflation they seem to wear forever. A kid who used to work for me put a set on an old Nissan pickup he used for work and claimed he got over 80k miles on them before they hit the wear indicators.

Noise, poor wear, etc. are the highway issues.

A couple of things to keep in mind is that the grreater and greater capability the tire gets for one environment or the other will cause compromises in the neglected arena. A tire that does great on the highway will likely not provide the traction needed for offroading, and the tire that provides excellent service offroad will be less than desireable for the highway. the trick is to find a tire that can play well in both arenas without the capability of one arena adversely impacting the capability in the other arena.

I run the BFG Mud Terrains, but I demand serioius traction offroad, and accept the lower performance I get on the highway. My brother uses the BFG All Terrains, because he demands good highway performance, and accepts a slight trade off in offroad travel. Having said that, I do not find that my tires let me do things he can't do, but generally I don't do all of the things I might otherwise do when he is with me, so I don't really know. I do know that he gets better tire wear than I get.

Given the statement you made that you demand good highway performance, and will take a slight trade off on the trail, you don't need the aggressive tread of a mud terrain tire or super swamper, and can probably be very happy with the performance of an All Terrain, or equivelent. I think that tires that lean more towards highway performance, like the factory tires that came on your Jeep, compromise off road travel too much for most people that have expressed interests such as yours. The All Terrain tires give excellent off road capability but do not adversely affect highway manners.

Just to be sure we are on the same page here, the AT K/O has no highway issues. My statement was that there are better offroad tires, but THEY have highway issues that you have expressed an interest in avoiding.

The BFG All Terrain (AT K/O) is in my mind an excellent choice for general offroading and offers great highway performance at the same time. I think you will be happier with a tire that gives excellent offroading capability, and does not compromise highway performance too greatly than you will be with a great highway tire that refuses to provide traction when offroad.

Take a look at the AT K/O, and get a feel for the tread pattern. Then look at other manufacturers with a similar tread pattern, then start comparing construction and pricing. Also consider the offroad warranty protection that might be offered on each of your available options. I think you will end up with a set of BFGs. The biggest drawback to the BFGs is that they are generally higher priced than other tires that are the same size.

Try to locate a magazine that tests tires, and see what the testers have to say. Be sure when you do this to take into account the fact that the testers might actually be selling the highest rated tires. for example, 4WheelParts sells Pro Comp tires, if they rated the ProComp tires higher than another brand, there could be a sales-motivated reason.

I changed from the 30" GSA's to 31" BGF AT's. The BFG's are much quieter and have a smoother ride. Plus they are outstanding offroad (not for deep mud). I put the GSA's on my Blazer and absolutely hate the road whine in the

Dan

IF, and only if, they rub the undercarriage during full-lock Uturns, you can adjust the steering stops by removing the stop bolts and inserting a washer or two and putting them back in.

The speedometer will read a few mph slow, but this is easily corrected with a gear that costs between 5 and 10 bucks, and takes about 3 minutes to install.

If you want, you can install a 1" body lift to provide additional clearance if you do any kind of serious offroading where the suspension gets fully flexed with one wheel stuffed completely up into the wheel wells while the other tires are hanging.

Thanks for the replies.. Maybe I will get the 31", speedo gear, and 1" body lift

Rich...

another question - where can I order this speedometer gear, and can you recommend a 1" body lift?

thanks again

You can get the gear from you dealer. You can probably get it from speedometer shops near you, too. You need to calculate the gear size you need based on your present gear. Bill has a pretty good chart, but I don't have the URL right now. He'll post it soon. :-) I've seen 1" Daystar lifts on ebay for less than $100. I couldn't tell you about the quality, though. If you put a body lift on, keep it down to 1-2". You will probably need to raise the motor mounts or lower your fan shroud. You could possibly have shifter/body interference, too.

Let us know how it goes.

The 1" body lift should slide right in and not require ano other mods. I agree the body lift should be kept to 2" or less. No body lift is probably the best, but 1" is OK too.

The body lift is essenthially a package of rubber bushings. You remove the bolts along one frame rail, raise the tub a little and slide the existing bushings out and insert the new ones. You shouldn't have much trouble, but there is plenty of opportunity for knuckle busting. When my brother did his body lift, we did one side at a time. It took us about 2 hours, but we don't work very hard or fast.

There are calculators on the web that help you figure out which speedo gear you need, I don't have the URL for any of them, but there are several and somebody here is sure to post at least one. The speedo gear fits into the rear of the tcase, just forward of where the rear drive shaft connects. The gear fits on a shaft that is part of an eccentric, the mount is round, but the shaft is offcenter a little bit. A single bolt holds the mount in place, remove the bolt, slide the old gear off and the new gear on, put the mount back in and gently twist it until the gear teeth mesh inside the tcase.