Can you put chains on the front wheels? The manual says to put them on the rear.

No way, run your hand behind the front wheel and see how much room there isn’t between the side of the tire and the shock tower and steering linkages. It will get destroyed if a chain hits that. Very bad design, I used to chain up all 4 on my Gen 1 to get access to some of the construction projects I used to go to in the mountains due to unplowed roads, not with this truck.

 

Put them on nice and tight. As long as you are off road, they should hold up well. It's the pavement that really wears on the cross chains.

 

Sure you can put chains on the front tires, "should you" is the question. I imagine it comes down to how bad do you want to go where those chains are needed? You can go to Vegas and bet on 14 red, bet all you want, they will sure enough let you do it. Should you do it?

 

Chains can physically fit on the front tires, but the cross bars will hit the UCA as soon as you start driving, there isn't enough space between the sidewall of the tire and the upper control arm.

Anybody in this thread who is saying you can run them has never tried.

 

Saw first hand what a broken tire chain did to a HUMVEE onetime. I would not want to have one break loose on the front of my TACO going down the road.

 

This happened to me back in high school in my mom's camry. We were so stupid didn't even check to make sure we had the right chains, we just borrowed some from a friend and they seemed to fit our tires so off we went!!

Coming down the mountain I heard a chain snap then when I went to hit the brake.... NADA, just went straight to the floor.

Lucky for us there was a pretty big snowbank I used to bring us to a stop with minimal body damage.

I still go to the mountains multiple times a year but haven't used chains since, and that was 16 years ago.

 

There have been some good comments about front vs rear so I won't add to that. Years ago we had a house in the Sierras at 6800 feet, on a side road that was only plowed when it got too deep for the locals. We had a triple-locked Land Cruiser 80 with off-brand all season tires. It did great on everything from slick ice to packed ruts to pushing fresh powder over the bumper. Then I got some BFG MT's. Worse in all winter conditions. Never got stuck, but it took more care and effort; bought chains and carried 'em but never used 'em. Great tires offroad in summer and mud, but not for snow in my experience.

 

Yup, I just bought a new set of BFG AT’s because they are really good in most conditions, especially off road, but there’s something about BFG’s rubber in that it gets really hard and inflexible in cold and the treads get choked up with snow instead of releasing it. My truck did a 180 by itself while parked on ice on a slightly crowned road - just took a slight nudge and it broke loose by itself! My other off-road tires (Yoko’s and Goodyears) always did better on snow and ice, even the Wranglers.