So my wife volunteers to help family in Marysville, Kansas. We hitch up the camper, and dash up here. I am pretty much spending the week working over the net from the camper and she's driving the X all over town getting it nice and dirty.

I walk out to this nice view this morning.


So Discount Tire is going to swap out the tires for me tomorrow. They tell me that have the Cooper Discoverer ATP (what's on there now), Mitchellin LTX, & Goodyear Wranger DuraTrac in stock.

Thoughts?

 

Go to 305's?

 

I've always had good luck and wear with Coopers. I just put on Cooper 295 85 18 ST Maxx tires and they ride really nice and don't really hum at speed.

The standard Cooper Discover ST was a good reasonably priced tire as well.

 

So what is the biggest deal for you? Price, comfort, performance, sound level? Different strokes... what I want you might not so tell us what you're looking for exactly

 

What happened to that tire?

 

The belts are separating... happened to me before on my old Suburban. I don't remember the brand.

 

All we do is street, highway, and recently towing a hard side camper (I have other toys for the dirt & mud).

I moved from the stock 265's to 285/75's 10 years ago and I'm happy with size.

Really, the only 'minor' disappoint I've had with the Cooper's has been that they're pretty loud. This is why I was considering the Goodyear or Mitchellin road tires assuming they were quieter. Price is always a player. Both are within $35 a tire of the Cooper.

 

buy the LTX M/S

 

Well, the web site was wrong... they didn't have the Goodyear or the Mitchelin in stock, so I went with the Pathfinder Sport SAT. Pathfinder is the Discount Tire brand made by BF Goodrich. They warrantied out the old ones without question... $0 out of my pocket.

Its a road tire rather than an all terrain. I had a 2 hour drive back and it drives very well. Its quite a bit quieter.

 

Not a bad looking tire Glad they did the warranty too, $0 is always affordable

 

So the manager mentioned something that just came to mind. He said the 285's should be on 8" rims.

I hadn't heard this before, so I did some poking around on the tire vendors sites and all of them say a 285/75-16 should be on 7.5 - 9" rims. The stock rims are 7".

I've been driving like this since 2004, so now I have some incentive (or rather, justification for the little lady) to get new wheels. I haven't bought wheels for any vehicle before, so before I go hog wild on shopping, any one got any 'look out for' items when buying wheels?

One concern is that I don't do anything that would cause a risk when towing...

 

A lot of people say a lot of things but there are a lot of people running 285's with stock wheels (not rims) with no ill effects. In fact I am thinking about getting a set next spring.

 

10 years later you want new rims,lol. If you want new rims then get-r-done, but if it's just because someone says you need them, I'd say your experience would say otherwise. Do you think that is why the coopers failed? Has this happened to you before?

 

That's pretty much what I am going to do... this was just an excuse to my little lady to do it.

Perhaps I should just restart the thread... really question is:

What do I look for when buying new wheels?

Is there a rating system for weight.... like tires have Load Range

I see some stuff about off-sets or shims... seems like 1/2 inch increase in with isn't going to be an issue, but just trying for due diligence.

I went to a couple tire shops here in town and they just smile and say sure, I can do that... not confidence inspiring.

 

no... the store manager said he's seen it a few times, but not so many one one tire.

No... not on single tire that I've ever owned.