Craig posted on November 20, 2010 23:53
Driving down the road, singing along to the radio when I hear the dreaded thwup thwup thwup thwup of a flat tire. I ease over to the shoulder as best I can, but the road is paralleling a swampy pond and there really isn’t a shoulder to pull on to. It’s a rural highway, but cars are whizzing by making me a bit anxious. I turn the radio off, take a breath, and collect myself… “OK, what’s the plan?”, I ask myself. “Call Julie to re-schedule the parent teacher conference, then swap the tire… oh, dang I don’t have a spare.” It turned out that the spare that came with the truck was bad and I hadn’t been able to find a used one yet. Back to my pondering I mentally resign and think, “I guess I’ll call AAA and get it towed back to the house. Man, I hate to waste a tow on a flat tire.” AAA fixes me up with a tow truck in no time, and after using my phone to pass the time by making a few “whoa is me” posts on facebook a very friendly tow truck driver shows up to drag us back to our home. 20 minutes later I’m online figuring out what tires I need to insure this sort of thing doesn’t happen again, on or offroad.
I already knew I wanted 235/85R16s so it was just a matter of deciding which tire to get. After a bit of research the choice was down to either the BFG MT T/A KM2s or the Toyo Open Country MT. Both great tires. I’ve always run BFGs, the new ones were getting good reviews, and they were about 25% cheaper than the Toyos. I decided to give them a try.
I was fortunate to find that Discount Tire in Burlington, WA could have them within 4 hours I just needed to bring the truck to them… oh wait, the truck is sitting at home with one wheel on a jack stand. Since I was switching tire sizes I couldn’t just swap on a new spare and drive it down. I hauled out the floor jack, put it on jack stands all the way around, and removed all the tires. I should get a discount for this, shouldn’t I? A few hours, and 3 trips back and forth to the tire shop and I had a set of new tires all mounted up. An unplanned and unwanted expense, but tires along with the brakes are one area I don’t like to mess around.
Liking how the new tires turned out, I had a fresh batch of motivation to work on the truck and decided to sort out a few little things:
- Washed the truck
- Adjusted the rear glass hatch so it seals and no longer rattles
- Adjusted the hood latch so it closes fully and doesn’t shake on the freeway
- Fixed the windshield squirters so they squirt, then unplugged 2 of the 4 holes so the entire windshield gets squirted rather than having 2 jets that are watering the roof.
I started looking at how to fix the heated windshield when I realized it was a sunny day, my wife was out of town, and that I hadn’t properly tested either the new LT230 or the new tires yet. I threw a little recovery gear in the back of the truck and invited my son to head up to Walker Valley ORV park to play around a little.
The trails were pretty wet, it was about an hour before sunset, and we were alone, so we didn’t head in very far. Mostly just played around on the first hillclimb and some of the other obstacles at the rock quarry where there were plenty of people around to give us a hand if we needed it.
The truck did OK, but not great. With no lockers, it drove up or down everything I pointed it at and rides pretty well when compared to the SWB vehicles I drove over the past year. There is a little bit of rubbing with the right front tire at full turn so I need to adjust the bumpstops. The exhaust was re-installed improperly after the LT230 swap, so it’s making a bit of noise as it rattles against the body at low RPM. The suspension is too stiff and doesn’t flex very well with the current load. It should improve with the weight of the additional accessories that are planned. The tires did well despite not being aired down though the ride was a bit harsh. It walked right up, and down, the hillclimb gatekeeper obstacle. The new setup should work great once the rest of the equipment is installed.
I really like the look of this tire/lift combo and most importantly I now have a brand new full size spare!