hunting for some new rubber for the truck

[plant.one]

so my crew cab s10 is currently running on 235/75/15's.

due to a (now corrected) mechanical issue on the front end suspension i've got one tire thats pretty wore down. the rest of my tires are ok. but would need replacement before spring anyway. so i'm going to jump on a new set this fall.

will be mostly road use, but i also hunt form this truck, and being in Michigan getting into some deep snow in the winter is a for sure possibility. i am a high mileage driver (35-40k/yr) so longevity is also important to me. i want to stay within a M/S all season type tire.

got some decent rebate promo's coming up in august and i'm lokoing at the following tires and would like some input.



i'm currently running cooper discovery AT3's. they're on my possible list for sure.

i've also been told that Hankook dynapro ATM's are a very close quality/performance tire

Michelin defender LTX's are also on the list as recomended to me. these have the best mileage rating of the 3 (70k) - but dont have as aggressive of a tread as the other two.



the price difference on these three tires is negligible, so its not a cost factor.


looking for some input on off road use for the Michelin's, especially in relatively deep snow. i'd love to be able to get the distance out of the michelin's without giving up the traction i'm used to from the cooper at/3's in the snow.

my dad runs hankook's but even as a medium-high mileage driver, he's still replacing them every two years or so. no complaints on driving them in deep snow.

[Steve Urquell]

I run defenders when I buy tires. Great life, great in the wet, pretty good in snow. They are the only tire I've run that will wear down to the wear bars without getting cut on my AR flint rock road. Most brands dont last past half tread.

I was sad to see my new Tacoma has Hankooks on it. They are the hardest compound tire I've ever run and were the worst tire I've ever run on my last truck. They slid in the rain on my old truck as well as the new one. I was happy to repla
ce them when they got cut up at half tread.

[Bullhed78]

I had Goodyear Silent Armour's on my Crew Cab S-10 and got 70,000 miles out of them. I was meticulous about rotating them every 6,000 miles. I am now running Goodyear Duratrac's on my jeep. They are 33x12.50R15 with about 20,000 miles on them and about 60% tread life left. They are rotated every 3,000 miles. They are much more aggressive offroad than the Silent Armour's and better in the snow, not that the Silent Armour's weren't good. If I were debating between the two I would pick Silent Armour if treadlife was the deciding factor and Duratrac's if I wanted a tire that performed in the dirt but was still pretty good on the road. I have also ran BFG KM-2 Mud Terrain and BFG All Terrain. The KM-2 MT's were absolute animals offroad in spring, summer and fall. Put snow on the ground and they might as well have been ice skates. The BFG AT's had good road manners but if you got into any sort of mud they may as well have been slicks. I didn't keep either set of BFG's to give you a good indication of tread life on them. If I was going to do it all over again I would buy the Goodyear Duratrac's again. If I didn't live in MI and didn't have to deal with snow I would go with BFG KM-2's in a heartbeat.

[hardcase]

Road noise to me in later manufactured vehicles is more important than longevity of the tire. My current ride is so loud on the Interstate with high mileage tires I can bearly hear the radio. The car salesman said "this model year is quieter than the previous year". This should have been a heads-up but the new car fever is as bad as the hot babe fever. Mine is 4x4 making noise worse. Cooper tires with harder compound sounded like an 18 wheeler. I had to take them off after 5-6k miles and went with Michelins top line tire. Still to loud when compared to the mid 1960s big road boats, but tolerable.

[cwlongshot]

I put a set of Defenders on my 2500HD two months ago. these tires are the smoothest nicest riding tires I have had on the truck. They ride BETTER than when it was new 160K ago!

No difference in rain or deep water at speed. I do not know first had about snow...yet.



CW

[plant.one]

thanks guys - i've been hearing lots of good feedback about the defenders - even in heavy snow conditions. i'm glad to hear even more positive feedback here

[Netpackrat]

I am running BF Goodrich Commercial Traction as a winter tire on my Jeep and they are amazing. They are studded, but they replaced a different brand of tire that was also studded, and the difference in traction was phenomenal. If I were running a single set of tires year round, I wouldn't hesitate to use them without the studs.

[plant.one]

I am running BF Goodrich Commercial Traction as a winter tire on my Jeep and they are amazing. They are studded, but they replaced a different brand of tire that was also studded, and the difference in traction was phenomenal. If I were running a single set of tires year round, I wouldn't hesitate to use them without the studs.

yea i cant even find those here at my tire guys. not even tirerack has them in my size.

thanks though! any input is appreciated

[plant.one]

as an update - i went with the Hankook's AT-M

turns out the coopers AT/3 were not on rebate like i was told, and even with the mileage increase i could have gotten from the Michelin's, i wanted the offroad traction more than i wanted the extra ~20k miles. i plan to keep the truck for another 100k - barring some catastrophic incident anyway - so either way i'm going to need two sets of tires. Might as well save the >$100 difference and put it towards the next set


i'm please to say that the hankook's AT-M are significantly quieter than the cooper at/3 are on the highway, at least on my vehicle. they're not touring tire for a sedan as far as road noise goes, but still quite nice!

as an added bonus on grooved pavement they dont really pull bad either like some other tires i've had in the past on different vehicles - the pirelli P4's i had on my aveo as an example!

got em put on yesterday morning and then drove a tank of gas off to break them in

[tfbit]

Whatever tires you get, don't go to Les Schwab for an alignment. Seven years ago I asked the wife to take the Expedition in for an alignment after I got tires. Got a call a few hours later that it needed $800 in work before they could even do an alignment. I went, glared at them, and left with their estimate. Took it to my fleet shop mechanic for him to look at and shake out and he couldn't find anything wrong. Drove on tires for seven years and had just a touch of inside wear on one of the rears when they were pretty much wore out. Got new tires and tried to get an alignment at a different Les Schwab and they ran the same game again, this time wanting $1200 before they could do an alignment. My fleet shop mechanic had just done the brakes and hadn't seen any problems.