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My Coopers were not cross rotated properly (only front/back cycles) so I have some wear on the right sides. Only 32,000 on these tires. Anyway, might need ball joints and for sure alignment. I have been looking at tires and thought I would post my thoughts and what I came across. My truck is a 2wd highway truck so looking for a HT tire.
Folks it IS tempting to go with a $100 Chinese tire. These Prinx look good but a Chinese tire on a Ford truck gaggs me. BF Goodrich commercial HTs run around $210 ea but have zero tread wear warranty. Even though the Mastercrafts have a good warranty, several complaints. Guess its the Coopers again for me. 235/85/R16.
Im no fan of china tires and it seems I see way to many on RV's and trailers blowing or coming apart. I don't buy the they were underinflated bit either, some sure, but every case?? . I will say Ive had more than a few sets of Taiwan or Indonesia made tires and they held up pretty good. I'm thinking all the epa regs in the US has dummied down most mfg'ing to where we cant make anything good anymore. I know Coopers are made here IIRC but as far as say Goodyears and a few others.......no thanks. We have Cooper AT3's IIRC with over 50K on them on our 4runner and their are great.
I too trust Cooper and a lot of guys here run Generals. Cooper owns Mastercraft but the mastercrafts are made overseas also. Bridgestone? Forget about that, over $300 per tire. Tires really are something you can not compromise on.
I'd probably purchase my Coopers again (AT3 XLT) or something Japanese. Just noticed neither TireRack nor Cooper list my size right now (285/75-16) for the AT3 XLT's. They are listing 295's or 315's however.
Anyway, I do have a Cambodian(Sailun) spare though!
I replaced my perfectly good spare last time . . just because. I cant rote the spare into the lineup because it is mounted on the crappy old OEM wheel. Might be worth trying to find a used wheel.
I'm also running HT tires on my DRW 2 wheel drive and for years I used Firestone Transforse HT tires with great results but the last time I bought 4 of them and put them on the back of my DRW they were HT2 not straight HT and they were unsafe at about any speed until they had 10K on them and because they wandered all over the road. Last summer I needed fronts so I put Sailun HT tires and so far I'm impressed, they are quiet with no wandering, I've been running Sailin 17.5 tires on our heavy 5th wheel for a few years with 0 problems and that's more than I could say about the GY 614 tires I was running.
I'm also running HT tires on my DRW 2 wheel drive and for years I used Firestone Transforse HT tires with great results but the last time I bought 4 of them and put them on the back of my DRW they were HT2 not straight HT and they were unsafe at about any speed until they had 10K on them and because they wandered all over the road. Last summer I needed fronts so I put Sailun HT tires and so far I'm impressed, they are quiet with no wandering, I've been running Sailin 17.5 tires on our heavy 5th wheel for a few years with 0 problems and that's more than I could say about the GY 614 tires I was running.
I will never ever buy another set of any tire Mastercraft makes. I had a set on a Jeep and my SD. They were cheap and I certainly got what I paid for them. No shop that I ever took both vehicles to could ever get the vibration out of them. Had them balanced, wheel matched, road force balanced and still had vibration on both vehicles. Swapped to Nitto's on both vehicles and have never had a vibration balancing issue since.
Same here. I took a chance on them once because in a physical comparison between them and the more expensive Brigestones, the Mastercraft tires looked tougher. Bad choice. I too developed a vibration (rear) and the dealer would rotate and balance and move on. Could never make it go away. Then I took ithe truck to a different dealer and they called me into the shop and said, "hey, look at this". They would spin the tire and you could literally see it being out of round. He said it was an internal flaw, probably a separated belt. The Coopers I have been running are tough, smooth, and quiet.
A good tire shop should have test driven your trucks, felt the shake after several balances and replaced the tire or tires. Been there dont that with 4 Ecopath tires at a small local independent shop. Just one more reason I'll NEVER use Discount tire again.
In my case, the tires were smooth running for the first 5,000 miles and then I got a small vibration on the rear. Did rebalance and rotate but it never went away. It was a broken internal belt. Yes, the Mastercraft brand is owned by Cooper but those tires are made in China. I dont trust them. There are several "off shore" brands on the WalMart selection list that claim to have HD strength and they look good and are priced around $100 per tire, but there is simply no way they could be decent quality at that price. Your life is riding on those tires! A blowout at 60mph on a 9,000lb truck could be catastrophic. Right now I am about sure I will go with the Coopers again. Still considering the General tire as well.
Let me throw this out RE walmart and other big box tires. Been some years ago but a co worker has fairly new name brand tires on his F250, Bridgestone possibly?? . Can recall what happened, but one went south. IIRC he bought them at his local Sears several hours away. The local Sears did not have those tires in stock. I told him no problem, lemme call my guys at Tire Pros. I gave them the serial number, name, size ,style bla, bla and he called back and told me no, those tires are specially made for Sears, Walmart and some other discount places and he cannot get them.
I've been running Coopers on all my trucks, usually the AT3's, and even on the little 2WD single cab F-150's, for many, many years. I think it's a superior tire, and particularly in the rain. They can be a little picky about wear... I rotate mine fairly religiously, alternating between criss-cross, and front to rear. On my retired 2009 2WD SuperDoody, which is just a grocery getter, now, I don't know that I've rotated them once in 15000mi, and you can't tell... they wear that evenly, and that's a truck at 215000mi. They can also be a little picky about tire pressure... depending on the weight you are carrying. I carry about 1500# in my 2023 work truck constantly, so I run my fronts at 60#, and the rears at 65#. If I were to pull a trailer, or carry more weight for any distance, I would adjust the pressures, accordingly. Disclaimer: Even though the AT3 is rated to 60K miles, I wear mine out at 20-22K because of what I do with my truck. To keep the warranty pro-rate, I have to rotate them on schedule, and document my miles... which I do, anyway. I've never had a problem besides a raised eyebrow when I go in for a new set.
The logical choice for a highway tire would be the HT3. I had one set of those, on a 2wd F-150, and I didn't care so much for them. Yes, they were quiet, but they lacked the water channeling ability an open lug tire like the AT3 has.
Agree 1000% I drove heavy trucks for about 20 years... and I never cheaped out on the tires. At the time, Goodyear made the best truck tires, and that's what we ran... and never had a failure, not in 815000mi (on the truck that I owned.) Buying less expensive tires was tempting... particularly when you are buying 8 or 10 of them at one time. After I sold my truck, and went back to driving a company truck, we always had problems with the cheapo tires.
I carry the same ethos over to my motorcycle tires... where, absolutely, everything is riding on your tires.
