What about 19.5" tires on your SRW truck?

Interesting how the focus is 100% on tires and seemingly little thought to lightening the load and leaving one of the kitchen sinks at home and adjusting driving style for the conditions.

Certain roads will chew up tires and this is worse when there is water which acts like a lubricant to reduce cut resistance of the tread. On bad roads I lighten my load as much as possible and reduce my speed as lower speeds results in less of an impact on the tires - and on the shock mounts and other suspension components and the passengers and contents take less of a hit as well.

Oh! And for till the end of time stay away from anything manufactured in China. Until they can prove otherwise their tire products are the worst.

Am a tire pro at all levels..lastly a consultant for large fleets and a tread design specialist..have not researched the M55 and ideally a solid center is preferred for a open design,as is the M55,but the ND design that I'm seeing form the photo I would recommend this tire based on tread design only. All tires produced today, except for ply material, are the same. All highway use tires from a VW to a Kenworth use a 72 hardness compound and are constructed and molded in the same way. So what I'm suggesting is the single most important factor in determining a purchase should be about the tread design.

It cost me less than $500 (less what I sold the factory tires for on craigslist) to put on 4 Nitto Terra Grappler tires in 285/70R17 on my truck. When I read about spending $1000 a corner for a rim and tire I expect to be dealer with a Freightliner truck and not a pickup.

Problems with even considering a 19.5" rim is the lack of ones made for the new GM 8x180 bolt pattern and the lack of choices in tire treads. I spent a lot of time traversing, with mixed results, deep mud and found that very aggressive "mud" tires usually resulted in the truck digging its way down until the differential hit the ground. The mud tires' profiles are also not good for snow for much the same reason and this applies doubly for sand.

For Alaska or similar areas with bad roads another option is to carry extra tires on the roof - just the tires and not rims. Out of the way shops may not have a replacement tire but they can mount the ones you carry along for the ride. I also carry spare inner tubes for the tubeless tires. On several occassions a tube could be inserted and the tire and rim (if bent) could continue to be used after suffering road damage. Got me home or to "civilization".

I am pretty sure the gov't is not buying Toyo M-55 tires based on price alone. I have used and really like M-55 tires, but the last time I put tires on my truck the Toyo was $110 more per tire than the Yokohama with the same load rating.

It's difficult to respond to your questions without more specific information:
Which model & size tires do you have now?
What do you mean by "some pretty rough roads?
And considering the age of your truck, what are you willing to invest in it?

I'd suggest starting a new thread so the responses can be directed to your specific situation.

Steve

lincolnmatthews wrote:
What are my options with a DRW 1 ton 99 Dodge?, although I'm not driving in AK I do quite regularly drive on some pretty rough roads with my old 880 Lance. I'm tired of worrying about my tires,(currently stock size Toyo's). I thought about 1" taller for more ground clearance & less RPM's. (I've got 4.10 axles) But then figured it may give me more side wall flex, which I don't need hauling the camper.
I thought about 19.5" whls but don't know if you can get them with a dual setup?.

Seems like I have to air up every month (truck sits alot on concrete with camper on) is it normal for the tires to leak off over a month's time? Maybe 5-10lbs. Just replaced a wheel because it was leaking thru the steel rim, how's that possible?
I assume that stock tires are a load range D w/2py sidewalls? I would like 3 or 4ply side walls, & can one get higher than E rating? Sorry for all the questions, I'm just not knowledgeable about tires that much. I will have to research this better.

bedrocker wrote:
My toyo M-55's are E rated 10 ply sidewall tires
very nice tires The forest service uses them
around here check em out :)

Actually, they are only 2 or 3 ply, depending on the size; 2-ply in the LT265/70R17 size. The only M-55 available that offers increased load capacity and will clear the brake rotors is the LT275/70R18, which is also a 2-ply tire and would require new wheels.

We have two criteria for tires:

Increased load capacity. There are two ways to increase load capacity: increase the size of the tire or increase the air pressure in the tire. LT tires are limited to an E-rating of 80 PSI, so means larger tires are needed to carry more load, which leads to clearance and bearing problems. A popular, although problematic solution.

More rugged & resistant to sidewall damage than an LT All-Terrain tire. This can be achieved by increasing the actual number of ply in the sidewall (ply-ratings are useless in this regard) and/or to build protective blocks on the sides of the tire. High quality MT tires add one ply to the sidewall and many have tread blocks on the sidewalls and bead protection. Commercial G-rated tires double the number of actual ply in the sidewall and while they don't have the tread blocks on the sides, they are specially designed to shrug off sidewall damage due to pot holes and curbs.

Unfortunately, there's no such thing as an LT tire that's built as strongly as a commercial tire. Besides that, their E-rating doesn't offer any additional capacity over the OEM tires. BTW, I worked for a major CA fire dept with numerous off-road fire apparatus. Like other gov't agencies, the primary criteria for tire purchases was price.

My toyo M-55's are E rated 10 ply sidewall tires
very nice tires The forest service uses them
around here check em out :)

What are my options with a DRW 1 ton 99 Dodge?, although I'm not driving in AK I do quite regularly drive on some pretty rough roads with my old 880 Lance. I'm tired of worrying about my tires,(currently stock size Toyo's). I thought about 1" taller for more ground clearance & less RPM's. (I've got 4.10 axles) But then figured it may give me more side wall flex, which I don't need hauling the camper.
I thought about 19.5" whls but don't know if you can get them with a dual setup?.

Seems like I have to air up every month (truck sits alot on concrete with camper on) is it normal for the tires to leak off over a month's time? Maybe 5-10lbs. Just replaced a wheel because it was leaking thru the steel rim, how's that possible?
I assume that stock tires are a load range D w/2py sidewalls? I would like 3 or 4ply side walls, & can one get higher than E rating? Sorry for all the questions, I'm just not knowledgeable about tires that much. I will have to research this better.

I guess so, although my opening statement should have given them a clue that we weren't talking about the normal run up the Alaska Highway . . .

I wrote:
Some of you may remember that we drove 3000 miles of haul roads in the Arctic in 2009 towing our Arctic Fox 29V. The Arctic Fox was quite comfortable and survived with only minor damage, but it was too big to go everywhere we wanted to go - so we added a Bigfoot camper to the fleet for our second trip to the Arctic.

:C

Our goal in 2009 was celebrate our 25th Anniversary by driving the most northern roads in North America as far north as possible in a 4X4 - a potential challenge in itself - and tow our Arctic Fox 29V the entire way. We spent a year & about $20K preparing the truck and trailer for the trip.

We'd driven to Alaska in 2004, so we knew the general lay of the land and the conditions that most folks encounter - easy - but we knew that we'd encounter the kinds of conditions that Garry described. It was obvious that tires would be a critical part of our preparation.

We did considerable research on tires beforehand, including studying the tires used by couples that had made circumnavigations (driven around the world). We were heavily influenced by the story of a couple that had a custom built 6X6 Land Rover that destroyed roughly 20 tires just during testing. Land Rover connected them with Firestone, who sponsored them with new & especially rugged tire that Firestone had just come out with - the Destination MT. They made it over half way around the world before their first failure caused by a broken tree branch that skewered a tire while fording a stream. I contacted Firestone and connected with an executive that had personally driven both the Dempter and the Dalton Highways, so he had first-hand experience with the conditions we'd encounter.

We upgraded the wheels on the Chevy to Alcoa forged aluminum and installed 265-section Destination MTs on them. The trailer got a set of LT235/85-16's mounted on new steel wheels. Some of the roads we traveled are extremely remote with VERY little traffic. Like the road from Yellowknife, NWT to Fort Nelson, BC. I think we saw something like 12 other vehicles during the 3 days we spent on that road and nearly half of those were broken down and abandoned. In other words, you're on your own in a big way.

Hence our 8 spares, all of them mounted and ready for service. Two on the roof of the truck's canopy, three inside on the Bedslide, two under the Arctic Fox (we added a second tire carrier to the chassis of the trailer) and the truck's OEM spare. Fortunately, we never had a tire failure, so we didn't use any of the spares. We carried LOTS of spare everything. Several bins of spare parts for both truck and trailer, plus extra water and fuel. We spent many hours repairing broken and severely worn stuff, but that's another story. We're still selling off stuff from that trip - anyone need a Pullrite 20K trailer hitch?



Here's what the rig weighed the morning we left home:

Chevy K2500HD
* Front axle 4,290
* Rear axle 6,310 (includes AF tongue weight)
* Chevy GVW 10,600
Arctic Fox 29V
* Front axle 5,000
* Rear axle 4,850
* Tongue wt 1,190
* AF GVW 11,040
GCVW 20,450

That's 4,770# heavier than the Chevy & Arctic Fox weighed the day we bought them (actual weights, not brochure weights). We're not known for traveling light! :B

Note how the rear of the Chevy was loaded nearly as heavily as it would be with a truck camper. Tire wear was a real issue. The Destination MT's come with 19/32 of tread, compared to the 8/32 for ST tires and 12-13/32 of most AT tires. The tires were worn down to 4/32 to 6/32 when we got home 9,000 miles later. The rear tires of the truck wore quite rapidly which shouldn't be a surprise considering how heavily they were loaded and how they also had to do the work of pulling the 11K trailer. Interestingly, the rear tires of the trailer also wore about twice as fast as the front tires, apparently from the freshly upset shale gravel. Both truck and trailer tires had to be rotated.

Back in 2009, we thought we'd do that once and be done with it. Now, we want to go back. But, we want to be able to get to some even more remote places we couldn't get to when we were almost 60' long, hence the camper. That's all well and good, but it's simply not possible to carry much in the way of spares in a camper, so we need to make it as bullet-proof as possible to start with.

Photo of the Bigfoot on our Ram 3500. There's no pressure in air bags when we took this photo. Also, the fuel tank will be moved 6.5" forward which will allow us to move the camper further forward in the bed.

Grit dog wrote:
Well you're talking about a whole different set of conditions than most everyone imagined, I think.
Yeah, get some HD tires and wheels if you're doing thousands of miles of off roading in the most remote area in the country!
Oh and buy the spare too!