99 Wrangler. I want to keep the tight turning radius (really love that on modern Jeeps) so planning on 31's. Over the next 4 years this jeep will see about 80,000 miles. I will drive it 50 miles a day to work on freeway. On weekends I will be in muddy pastures with cows and driving down firelanes in timberland (I need to save up for lockers too. That will be another post around christmas time (if I am a good boy)), so I am thinking mud, not rocks. I like the looks of the BFG MT's, but am wondering if AT would be a better compromise. I would like to hear the experience of other Jeep owners.
wow, lucky you! i really enjoy driving my wrangler and still find myself looking for excuses to go places just so i can drive it more.
i think this would rule out the a/t. opinions seem to vary, but i think the bfg a/t becomes slick _way_ to fast in the mud. im not a big fan anymore of the bfg m/t, but only because bfg is a french company (not a "valid" reason by which to base a recommendation, i know). as far as the bfg m/t performance, i was happy with them. i prefer the mtr, but cant recommend it with as many miles as youll be driving.
I have the muds on the CJ7 and the AT's on the Cherokee.
I wish in hindsight we hadn't swapped tires and rims on the Cherokee. It used to have almost a mud tire on it, a Hercules Terra Trac tire. My wife and a friend liked each others rims and we both had new tires, so we swapped because my wife drives mostly on the street.
The mud tire (terra trac) is a better all round tire for our application where we are on the road when snow plows aren't out and they can run circles around the AT's off road which is why our friend wanted to swap. We were just cruising up stuff that he had to take several tries at with the AT's.
And in wet grassy mud, the AT's turn to slicks pretty easy, the bigger lugs clear out.
In the snow or on ice, well I'll take the CJ7 with it's muds any day. The AT's aren't bad by any means, the muds are just better...
I also am running tall skinny muds that have a 7.5" wide tread. The P235 AT's have an 8.5" wide tread.
Tall skinny rules! Just check out what any logger or other person that has to work in the bush runs. You won't see any fat tires out there.
Folks used to chuckle at my 'pizza cutters' or 'chainsaws' as they call them on my open diffs until they realized, locker or no lockers, they weren't getting to that top of the ravine with their fat tires where I am sitting taking photos of their attempts. LOL!
On the highway the muds behave well, not even too noisy. We took the CJ7 on a 4600 mile trip and it ran sweet. I also had a 45 mile round trip to work for years and used the CJ7 as my daily driver.
Mike
86/00 CJ7 Laredo, 33x9.5 BFG Muds, 'glass nose to tail in '00
88 Cherokee 235 BFG AT's
A wide tire will rub at full turn. You can stop the rub by adding a washer or two to the steering stop bolts, but either way, the turning radius is affected.
Mike
86/00 CJ7 Laredo, 33x9.5 BFG Muds, 'glass nose to tail in '00
88 Cherokee 235 BFG AT's
Yes. Well, not alot, but some. What happens is the larger tires can rub on the undercarriage components during a Uturn. The corrective action is to make the turning radius larger.
My YJ came with BFG Muds (33x12.5) When I bought it. I hated them. aside from a bit too noisy they sucked in the snow. Those hard rubber aggressive treads held packed snow and was like driving on 4 snow boards. I switched to All Terrain's (35x12.5) and sold the muds in the middle of mud season for $85 each.
Then I ran the AT's that spring and summer and found them ok in mud and snow but lacking in sand. It's not uncommon to go from a mud bogg to a sand pit around here. The noise was much better but still a little too loud if it mattered. I talked to a local 4x4 shop and they told me to look at the new tread design on the Mickey Thompson Baja's. They said they were getting great reviews from the locals for snow, mud and sand.
After seeing a set I upgraded to them (36X12.5) and haven't looked back. They were about $40 more in cost each than the AT' equivalents but I got $100 each for my 5 AT's in trade. I've had them on for 3 years now and they still have plenty of tread. They're quieter and are better in the snow and mud then my AT's were. I had a long, long dirt hill driveway that became mud in the spring. I needed 4x4's just to make it up to the house in the winter and spring. It is very easy to compare when you have the same testing driveway year in and year out.
You might be surprised but I have an AWD Grand Caravan that handled this driveway/hill very well too. I also had a 1966 Scout that had no problem plowing it in the winter. ;-)
That does create a lot of extra stress and wear on front end parts.
Just big tires alone, never mind off roading big tires causes fast front end wear, go with a wide off set rims and you can likely double the wear rate. It will be some % higher, don't know about double, but you get my drift.
Same goes for those spacers you can put on the hubs to off set rims wider.
A 'little' wider stance make a radical difference on the stress. Think levers.
Mike
86/00 CJ7 Laredo, 33x9.5 BFG Muds, 'glass nose to tail in '00
88 Cherokee 235 BFG AT's
while im with you in theory, in real world applications if an inch or two of offset is going to cause failure then youre pitifully under-equipped to begin with. i wouldnt hesitate to run even 2" of offset on a dana 30. i cant see 2" of offset being as hard on a dana 30 as say this
i gotcha...yeah, any off set that increases track will indeed cause additional wear. that said however, so do bigger tires, heavy bumpers, etc. just how much additional wear is unknown, i figure its the cost we pay for performance.
I just think losing turning radius, is a better option than the added wear from a wide off set. So what if I have to do a 5 point turn instead of a 3 point well... I don't with my 33x9.5's, they don't tag, but others with wider tires like our Cherokee has do.
We have enough added wear to deal with already in my opinion.
I have 35 inch thornbird TSLs. They seem like a good compromise between on road and off road performance (which I need both) but man are they loud on the freeway. Driving over 70mph definitely gives me a headache. Any suggestions on 35 inch tires that will perform as well but perhaps be a bit quieter?
Im not trying to put you down, but everyone kinda knows that the thornbird TSL's are junk Good decision to get rid of them! The Goodyear MTR's are a bit pricey but I love them. There are also a ton of new tires on the market that I dont know much about yet. KH
Not sure the Thornbirds are junk, but after pricing out a set of 35" MTRs I got another set of BFG M/Ts, I couldn't image the MTRs were worth $80 more per tire than trusty BFG muds.
Gerald, I was slicing my BFG MTs up like crazy out in the California deserts. And I used to be a strong proponent of BFG's MT. STRONG supporter. Since switching to the MT/R with its far stronger sidewall, that kind of stuff stopped. The MT/R is a FAR stronger tire than my BFG MTs ever were. Is that worth more money to you? It was to me when I made the switch! :)
In all the years I've run BFG ATs & MTs, and it's now up to about 7 sets on several vehicles, I've ripped exactly ONE tire through the sidewall. I don't doubt the MTR is a good tire, just no evidence I can see that it's that much better. Avalanche Engineering here still run BFGs on all their competition rock crawlers and they echo my experience, BFG tires are just not an issue for them. Time will tell if the MTR is as good as it looks. Goodyear seems to loose faith in their mud tires awfully quickly (remember the MT?), and they've always priced way high compared to BFG.
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