285/70/18 - 34” on 24 models

Vidmen’s chalk test may be of value in this case

 

He took off the crash pad thingy. Once you do that, the world is your oyster for tires.

Anyway. I’ll likely keep the size and try to dial in the PSI or find a softer tire. I got a few days to be able to swap them still.

 

I just want to bring the tires out a bit. Maybe just a smidge outside the fender flares. My ARK micro mudflaps don’t do anything anyways lol.

 

you guys are absolutely 100% correct,
I learned something & can publicly admit when I’m the dummy….

 

you’re not a dummy - I didn’t know shit about shit until I went deep into this rabbit hole a few months ago lol — but bottom line our trucks are so light it’s probably not a big deal to slightly under inflate E load tires

 

I emailed falken....
They asked, what tires it had, sticker psi, what size & rating tire I went to, etc....
Told me exactly where set my tire pressure..

 

which tires did you end up getting

 

I did the same and it was the same pressure this site suggested: it just rides a bit hard so I am going to drop the pressure a bit since the margin of safety is so wide. Curious if yours ride hard.

 

I saw the cluster fuck and lack of tire selection for the 18 inch wheel so I sold my stock wheels and purchased some 25 positive offset methods.
Went with standard load rating falken wild peaks, 285/70/17…
Does it ride as smooth as when I had the highway tread general grabbers, no…
But it does ride pretty smooth, when I first got the car from discount tire pressure was sent at 35 psi, that was definitely a rough rigid ride. Dropped pressure down to 30 psi as instructed by falken…
Also lifted just the front 2.5”s with the Westcott collar lift..
Much better…

 

C, D, E, F all require the same pressure for the same load capacity. The difference is the greater the letter, the more capacity it has beyond the tire before it. So while a C maxes out its load capacity at 50 psi, a D will support the same at 50 as C but it will continue on gaining capacity until its max at 65. Just like E at 80, etc.

For the same weight a Tacoma sees, assuming you’re comparing all the same size tires, LT C, D, E will all call for the same pressure. An LT265/70R17 on a 4th gen Tacoma as an example will be around 39-40 psi regardless of letter designation.

 

Wow Falken said 30? What load range ? Looks really good.

I’m guessing C. Lucky. That is the perfect load for our trucks. I did not have that option on the 18” TH wheels. I see why you went to 17”.

 

Probably SL.

 

Pretty sure they’re considered SL, standard load, my understanding is standard load and see are the same.
My reaction was the same as you, wow, that’s low…
Was brought to my attention that the off-road door jam sticker says 30 psi from the factory.
Drastically improved my ride quality after I dropped air pressure, at 35 I would feel all sorts of small cracks in the road.

 

SL and C are not the same. They have similar load capacities but need different pressures. The C’s would be stronger overall and have thicker tread in most cases.

 

i did go with the SL which was $2 more per tire over the C rating...
Youre correct, Falken does offer both in that tire size, not the same...

 

I see SL in your size — that’s the biggest size in SL. That’s a very practical tire. Only 53 pounds and likely can handle most off-roading. Mine are E load HDs. Probably a much worse ride but tougher.

 

Yeah this makes perfect sense.

Conversely, the ride becomes more harsh as you move through increasingly stiffer, heavier tires, so the tendency is to reduce air pressure to ‘soften’ the ride. Sounds like that’s not necessarily the best solution given the reduction in ‘potential’ load rating. Best move is to get the tire most closely aligned with the target load rating.

I think there is a caveat from some manufacturers for some models where you shouldn’t run heavier load rating tires because it is harder on the drivetrain. For some reason I had load range E tires in my mind for the Tacoma as being a no-go, but I might be off my rocker. Can anyone else think of any such cases?

 

I haven’t heard of anyone saying not to go with heavier load range due to being harder on the drivetrain, but I suppose it’s possible. I think the heavy tires tend to wear out shocks more than anything else, but who knows.

There are some differences in the tire construction that end up being why you keep the pressure higher or lower. An SL is a very soft and flexible tire. LT is stiff and rigid. If you think about it, a thicker balloon would be harder to blow up than a thinner one. same concept. Need more air to safely seat the tire, because you’re actually fighting harder to expand the tire out.

Non-LTs being soft like they are means they flex a lot on the sidewall to produce a flat surface on the ground. So keeping the pressure lower them helps with that. LTs usually have a flatter tread that sits pretty flat on the ground even without the sidewall bulging. LTs being stiff already don’t bulge a whole lot, not near as much as SLs anyways.

the best thing to do is stick to a reasonable door sticker. Some manufacturers just put 35 psi on the door sticker on all cars no matter what tire size. The Frontier was/is like that. That is unreasonable, and ends up overinflating all of them. I never understood why mine handled so poorly under braking at speed until I realized that 35 was way too much for the tires it had.

Toyota varying the pressure between the different models and tire sizes tells you they are doing their due diligence. Best thing to do is take that and cross calculate it using the calculator to figure out what’s ideal.


One thing to understand is LTs aren’t rated below 35 psi. This doesn’t mean they won’t roll as soon as you hit 34 psi, it just means that they are not documented as to what they can support below 35. So, on a large LT tire such as a 33” or greater, often trucks of our size aren’t heavy enough and the calculator will bottom out on 35 psi, even though we technically need less air than 35. The calculator will not recommend you to run less than the documented 35 minimum. You can extrapolate what to put it at by seeing the difference between what load the tire carries at 36 psi vs 35, and then scaling it down accordingly. So if the difference is 50 lbs, and 35 psi is 250 lbs over for what you need, you could drop it to about 30 safely. It’s just the calculator won’t recommend that.

 

Agree with all this. Issue is that in my size I cannot find lower than E load other than maybe a couple brands. So I either go smaller or go E. Sucks. I like the idea of an E load, but it just transmits every road bump and gets old unless you drop down to 31 PSI. If I extrapolate load it’s fine but the margin of safety is much narrower. Using the calculator I technically need 37 psi to keep the same exact load capacity.

 

As ambivalent as I am about ride quality, these tires are sexy.