![]() ![]() I also question the durability of the stock steering components now that they are turning such huge tires. It required a lot of work to fit and will need even more in the future to do this really right. So for me the jury is still out on this size tire from my perspective. Not surprising since these have a much less aggressive tread. Traction - Traction felt it was a bit reduced on dry loose rock vs. Obviously this will be corrected with gears later down the road.Ĥ. The truck was rolling faster especially in 2nd which meant much more brake modulation descending steeps and crawling rocks. Crawl Ratio - When in 4 low the negative impact of messing up my crawl ratio was felt. I’ve done the rockier part of this trail many times before and there was definitely a difference there.ģ. Clearance - It was nice to be able to roll over larger rocks without tagging my skids and rear bumper. Not surprising since these larger tires have a lot more rolling mass.Ģ. Steering - I definitely felt an increase in bump steer when going over rocks. So the real question was how did they do off-road? Here is what I think:ġ. Fenders need to be cut, BMC dialed back and firewall beat back. So off into the mountains we went to find some great campsites and rocks and ruts to play on.Īs expected the tires showed me where I needed to do more clearancing at full compression. I removed my fender flares ahead of time because I knew they would be a problem. So I thought it would be a perfect opportunity to test clearancing. ![]() We had a weekend up in the Western Sierras for some mountain biking and moderate wheeling. Now it was time for some off-road driving impressions. I returned 17 mpg hand calculated at the pump using the TFLTruck method over that 100 mile loop. Gas Mileage - Fuel economy was still decent with average highway speeds around 65 mph. Transmission - Transmission temps and shifting were fine even when climbing a mountain passĤ. So at 65 mph my engine was spinning at just about 1600 rpms.ģ. Engine Speed - RPMs at highway speed are lower than my previous setup. Power - There was definitely a hit on power but it wasn’t as bad as I expected it to be.Ģ. Before I went out I did a 100 mile loop to get some initial pavement impressions running a tire of this size with stock gearing. I had a camping trip planned this weekend so I knew I would be able to test them out. So off I went to grind down more body mount and to flatten the pinch welds. Here is one mounted on a wheel next to an unmounted 285/70/17 Ridge Grappler with about 99% tread left.Īs you can see once mounted it was really apparent I needed to do a ton of clearancing for these to work off-road. These tires are notorious for being undersized and at 62.4 lbs they were pretty light. I didn’t want to go to a full size 35” tire so I decided to go BFG K02 in the 315/70/17. However, curiosity killed the cat and with a couple of really technical trails on my list for the next month I decided to upgrade. This is when you think of mechanical reliability, affects on on-road performance and the level of effort to get things working properly. I’ve always been a believer that 33 inch tires are the perfect size for our platform. ![]()
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