255/85 R16 Owners Experience

This is a good point about the wear bars and makes me almost feel guilty about selling used tires... I know that the couple times I've rid of my 75% used KM2's in the past it's been to a guy for a dedicated off-road rig anyways. But I feel like I've been destroying my own tires by switching sides during a rotation. I want to investigate this further... does it happen to all style/brands of tire?

I will say that I would NEVER intentionally sell something with damage/defect or was unsafe. Blemish tires that the other poster bought by mistake? That's ridiculous. Some people have no conscience!

 

Interesting. I've never heard this before... so in other words don't rotate your tires or only swap them from front to back and not passenger to driver?

So why is the standard at most shops to swap front-driver to rear-passenger and front-passenger to rear-driver? I would think what you are saying would be more widely known that the rotation style I posted.

I've rotated my KM2's like I stated above twice now with no issues that I have noticed.

 

You wouldn't like my tire setup...


I really do disagree with you though.

 

Dave Tarantino told me the same thing

 

My price quotes show the Toyo open country MT is over $400 more a set than the Cooper ST tires. BFG KM2 are just $100 a set more than the Coopers. (all these in 255/85R16. For desert use (loose sand / loose rock / hard pack) can I expect the KM2 MT pattern to work as good as an AT like the Cooper ST? Asking people with Cooper the say they love them, bit so do the owners of the KM2's, and the Toyo ownere rave about theirs too!

 

Being an owner of the cooper st 255/85, I wouldn't expect them to do what a MT can. I would expect more from the km2's or toyos, although these st's can go through some crapy spots. They have big/ spread out tread blocks for an AT.

Toyos are expensive, so I feel ya on that.

 

I'd go coopers...

 

I found the toyos for less than $1000 shipped somewhere (and in stock) but now I can't remember where. I think I'm going with KM2s anyway. $924 shipped. I'm going to have them road force balanced and no BFG suppliers around here do that so I don't have a reason to buy locally.

 

I'm a happy owner of 255/85-16 from Toyo, and the tire place told me about rotating their tires, to keep the L and R on their sides and just go front to back. If adding the 5th/spare, then only rotate it on 1 side..

My Toyo's were built in 2008 and installed 2 weeks ago, and they came with their full company warranty.

Road noise is pretty minor for the M/T tread and overall I like it.

they are ~.5" skinnier than oem sized 265/70-16 but a good 3" taller..feels like the best of both worlds in not hurting too much on mileage and the added clearence.

aired down to 18psi for some sand and they performed better than my older Toyo A/T's

yes they are expensive but so far they work great and i'll probably buy it again

 

Good to hear Luca!

 

I have the Toyo MT and could not be happier. if your in rocky conditions such as I am here in AZ, the 10 ply side walls are invaluable. Plus they are E load bearing and < 10 lbs PSI is fine with how light our trucks are (slow crawling) although I generally run 14 to 16 psi even going at a pretty good clip.

Just my $0.02

 

How rough do the Toyos ride? I've seen a few posts where people think they are bone jarring because of the stiff sidewalls. Most people say the bfg is better on road. I want the toyos but not if they are going to be too stiff for the street.

 

Can you provide any literature regarding this? I've worked in a tire shop the last 3.5 years and have never heard of this. If it were the case, it would make sense for tire and vehicle manufactures not to recommend cross-rotating tires. The only thing I could think of is the tread blocks may have a few hundred miles once crossed that would cause them to ride a little noisier than normal. This would be caused by the tread blocks no longer being the leading/trailing but exact opposite. I would assume after the tires adjust to the new rotation there wouldn't be any severe issues (especially in regards to belt problems). I'm just curious because I've never heard anything from the professionals (TIA) and of course vehicle and tire manufactures. As well as I do plan on rotating my spare into the mix on my first.

 

Very true. I was living down in Sierra Vista for a few months and did plenty of wheeling down there in the mountains along the border. I annihilated a set of General Grabbers in about a month (they were on my truck when I bought it CPO) and replaced them with KM2's. Couldn't be happier. The cacti and rocks chewed up the generals and I was putting a plug in at least once per off-road trip. It became pretty routine and I didn't even skip a beat... but definitely night and day with 10 plys. 3 sets later and still not even ONE SINGLE puncture or tear.

I miss AZ!

 

not that rough at all. it handles the bad roads better than my car does.

 

Anyone run the truxus mt from interco? My km2's are almost done. And there are very limited 255/85 tire selections. So far the toyo mt looks like it will going on to replace the km's.

 

How were the km2's in snow ?

 

KM2's do great in the snow! Ice on the other hand is iffy. I ran my tires at 20 psi all last winter with no problems though. They seem to do pretty good on ice aired down a little. Just air them back up when it warms up. 75 mph at 20 psi generates too much heat for the tires when it's warm out. Where I live the high all winter is usually in the 40's so heat isn't much of a concern during winter. Although I'm also a lot heavier than most rigs on this site so I get more flex at 20.

 

My KM2's (albeit 265/75's) were absolute shit in the ice last year. I was very light on the skinny pedal in a little bit of ice last year and they bucked and skipped for about 15 feet. Not real great in the snow I experienced either. They were still aired up to around 40/38 though.

Matt

 

Ice isn't a huge concern for me and our coastal snow is usually very wet , more like white mud most of the time

I did a couple winters with Hankook MT's