The Lone Ranger – Military Tire Take Off Update
Now that I’ve had these tires on for a while, I thought it was time for a bit of an update.
On Road Comments:
Snow – This year has been utterly disappointing for snow down in the St. Louis area. I did get to run them in light snow (less than 1″) both ways (siped and unsiped). They really weren’t any worse in the snow than the swampers I used to run on my Cherokee so I’m not sure why there’s so many complaints about how they work in the snow Update 1/3/13 – I’ve recently had these offroad and on road in the snow. They don’t suck as much as I thought they would, but they do leave a little to be desired. I think the fact that my truck weighs in at nearly 6k lbs when loaded help with keeping these things stuck to the road pretty decently.
Wet – See the comments for snow. I’ve driven quite a few ‘wet miles’ on these tires, and they haven’t scared me at all.
Dry – The tires are nice and quiet running down the road and have pretty decent road manners. Balancing has been a pain in the ass, but I think that has been mostly caused by my soft leaves out back which I need to fine tune a bit more (each tire/wheel/bead lock combo weighs in at 150 lbs).
Off Road Comments:
They aren’t the most awesome thing offroad, but siped and aired down to 8-10psi they work well enough. No issues with sidewall strength, but they did start to chunk a bit after I siped them.
In the dry, they hook up without complaint, if things are a bit wet, I might have to work a bit harder, but I can still get to where I’m trying to go. I don’t really play in the mud but the little bit that I’ve wandered into, the tires seemed to clean out pretty well.
The biggest complaints I have with the tires is how much they squat as they air down, and side bite (Being able to climb with the sidewall). I know they’re not a bias ply, but I was disappointed at how much ground clearance I lost when aired down (my heavy truck didn’t help with things I’m sure). I am still farting around to try to find the ideal pressure to run the things at where I’ll still get a decent bite without losing too much ground clearance (Edit- I run them at 12-15 PSI depending on the terrain).. As for the side bite, the Nittos probably just spoiled me with those huge lugs hanging off the side, they made getting out of ‘ruts’ easy.
Would I run this setup again? All I can say is ‘it depends’.
-If you’re looking for a way to get a cheap 37″ tire for ‘mild’ wheeling that will wear well on the street, then this setup makes sense. You’ll need to burn through two sets before things work out financially (I’ve got about $1500 wrapped up in wheels/tires right now, the trade off is that the next time I need to replace tires, it’ll cost me $500 for a set of 5, where as most other 37” tires are running $380-$480 each).
-If you’re looking to get cheap bead locks and don’t mind the 16.5″ rim size then the H1’s make sense.
-If you’re looking for a ‘turnkey’, cheap double bead lock setup that’ll make you billy badass on the trail, look elsewhere.
Looking back I wish I would have gone ahead and bought a new set of Nittos and called it good, as I don’t really need the double bead lock feature for the wheeling I tend to do. In fact, when I wear these tires out (or I get the cash together for something different), I’ll ditch these and get something else. So take that for what it’s worth.
One quick note about TWF. They did make things right by me in the end, but it was a bit of a hassle. YMMV.