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Looking at buying a pickup (Hilux or Ranger, probs) for, likely, 85-90% road duty and the rest tooling around muddy fields and woodland.
Should I just stick with the road tyres that come with the thing for better MPG, at the sacrifice of being a bit hamstrung offroad? Or go for something like the BF Goodrich T/A KO2 which seems to be very well regarded both on and off road, at the sacrifice of MPG (although not quantified anywhere how bad it affects it)?
I got General Tyre AT's, seem a good compromise and they seem a popular choice for Discoverys etc.
The BF you mention is off-road biased, I didn't want that much compromise for on-road driving, particularly the braking distances.
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+1 for Grabber ATs
Depends what you want to do/ need to do. Try to drive across a wet clay field or a wet clay forest ride in the middle of winter you'll get stuck whatever tyres you've got. You'll just get stuck worse with further to get pulled out!
My ranger does well on the road with Yokohama geolander at's and its good enough off road in the woods and on grass rides etc if it's not too wet and there's lots of wet clay soil about. They seem tough and haven't picked up any damage shunting trailers etc around in the wood yard either.
If it's that wet and hsitty you dont want to be driving about all over the place in your woodland or field anyway!
I had the grabber ats on my freelander. Great on the road as well as being pretty good off road. I went for the yokos as they were cheaper. They've been good.
I have Grabber AT2 on my Disco. Much better off Road than a lot of AT type tyres, . They're a bit noisy on road, but I haven't noticed a big drop in economy. My main caveat is that they lack grip in the wet, I've had the back end step out a couple of times on a roundabout exits, so that would be even more likely in a pickup.
Despite what people on here say (and I'm surprised there hasn't been a deluge of crap already) most pickups are extremely competent off road and have a ton of grip in 4x4 mode even with road biased tyres.
Best bet is to buy the truck and test it with the stock tyres before you splash out. They do look much better with a big tyre though. I had Bf Goodrich ATs on my Hilux. I had it up a tractor trail over a mountain in 2ft of snow and barely needed to put it in 4wd.
Michelin latitude cross here, has been good regularly retrieving boat out of muddy field we store it in, also supposed to be reasonably economical and quiet (def not as quiet as pure road tyre tho). Appeared to have positive reviews
Used BFGoodrich AT's for 10 years on L200's and found them okay.
I had the BFG KO2's on my Navara. Fine to drive on the road, but definitely slippier than the Conti Cross Contacts they replaced. You'll get 70k out of them and they worked for me towing a 1.5t trailer round in 12" deep mud. I lost around 5mpg (down to 25 from 30 - 3.0l V6)
We recently bought a four wheel drive Santa Fe which has Michelin tyres with 70% road and 30% Off road tread. So far so good.
I used Cooper AT3s on the L200 which were fantastic, but a added to the thirst! The Navara has more road going Continental LXs on it which are a 90/10 road bias and they seem generally good.
So long as you don't have Bridgestone Duellers then you should be fine 😉 If it has them on, get shot asap - hateful tyres!
So long as you don't have Bridgestone Duellers then you should be fine If it has them on, get shot asap - hateful tyres!
Ditto - should be taken out of sale on safety grounds
Best bet would probably be to line the bed with paving slabs and get some weight on the back axle.
We run full muds on all our works 4x4, mix of BFG, Maxxis and Michelin and some Grabber, but not rated those on the hilux or Land Rover so not fitted them again. No issues with the first 3, Maxxis is possibly loudest, closely followed by the Michelin, but the Michelins narrow width makes it the best in mud and snow.
Edit: had a Disco 3 on road tyres that would go a lot of places hilux on muds wouldn't, proper smart electrical gubbins going on.
Right, thanks. I was expecting a lot of comments telling me to stick to road tyres!
I'll probably do as jimjam says and see how I get on with the stock tyres. If I'm struggling, I'll check out some of the suggestions above.
And I'm sure it would definitely look better with a chunkier tyre 🙂
A decent air compressor so you can drop 20psi out of the tyres when you go off road would be my first port of call.
Definitely second jonah on having a compressor so you can use appropriate pressures.
We're running Cooper AT3s on our Freelander 2, and have been over quite a few of the rockier and sandier parts of Australia with them. Not so much mud, but have been fine when we've come across it. Definitely noisier than the road tyres they replaced, but we went from 19" to 17" at the same time, which will have contributed.
My one niggle with them has been susceptibility to punctures. Sure, we have lots of sharp rocks here, but we do seem to have been through more than I would have expected in five years of running them.