31" Tires, Whats your choice?

[MKauffman]

Howdy,

I'm hoping to thorw a 2" inch lift on my '02 Wrangler. To go with this lift, obviously, I will need some bigger tires. Whats everyone's choice for 31" AT tires? Cheap is deffinately a plus, tiny budget to work on. Ill just keep my stock wheels to keep it down a bit.

Thanks,
Matt

[magoo117]

It would be tuff to beat BFG A/T's,60,000 miles out of them and good off road,good price too.OK4wd is 119-,I think,you could try Costco also.

[OlllllllO]

i second the BFG's....a great tire. look around on the other forums, alot of times you can find some slightly used at a great price. thats what i did when i got my tires, saved me around 100-200 dollars.

[NJ Rubi]

Its tough for me to say this being Im a die hard MTR fan converted to the swamper side, but I ran a set of Bridgestone Duelers for, what it felt like, a million miles, on a bronco. Aggresive tread patttern for on road and light offroad wheeling. Never need to be rebalenced. Just an all around good tire. They are very reasonably priced too. Probably under $100 each still for a 31x10.50. Check out tirerack.com , they have good comparisons on tires and pretty decent prices too. Good Luck

[MYGOODNESS]

My vote is for BFG AT ko's .. My set of BFG AT's have 40k miles and are still going strong. These tire work great in snow ,rain ,sand ,rocks even mud. If your on a tight budget and the jeep is your DD I would spend a few exta bucks on good tires and hold off on the lift.

31's will fit on a stock wrangler.

[bmxpunk1369]

kumho mt's, dirt cheap, just as good as BFG, and apparently they suck in wet weather but ive never been able to break traction and i drive like an a$$hole sometimes.

[dmxjg35]

kumho mt's, dirt cheap, just as good as BFG, and apparently they suck in wet weather but ive never been able to break traction and i drive like an a$$hole sometimes.

I agree i have these too, only had 2 problems with them, 1. my own stupidy i never got an alighment after lifting doh so my front tires on the outside are shot after about 10-20k back tires and the inside of the fronts are brand new still. 2. they are a little scary changing lanes on the highway after it snows, the really grab the slush, but i think any mud tire would do that. for under 100 bucks a tire you really cant go wrong

[njedgexj]

bfg's at ko's....

[sentinal02]

kumho mt's, dirt cheap, just as good as BFG, and apparently they suck in wet weather but ive never been able to break traction and i drive like an a$$hole sometimes.

I agree i have these too, only had 2 problems with them, 1. my own stupidy i never got an alighment after lifting doh so my front tires on the outside are shot after about 10-20k back tires and the inside of the fronts are brand new still. 2. they are a little scary changing lanes on the highway after it snows, the really grab the slush, but i think any mud tire would do that. for under 100 bucks a tire you really cant go wrong

for traction problems with the MT's sipe or groove them. did this with my thornbirds and it's improved handling 100%. most good tire shops will sipe them for your for like 5 bucks a tire, but you can do like i did and do it yourself with a box cutter.

as far as what tires to go with, I can tell you to stay away from Cooper tires. had a set that came with the jeep when i bought it and they only lasted about 17K miles before wearing out. when i bought it i compared the tread depth to the manufacture's state depth since the PO said they were almost brand new and they had 90% of the tread left. won't be buying these again.

[dmxjg35]

kumho mt's, dirt cheap, just as good as BFG, and apparently they suck in wet weather but ive never been able to break traction and i drive like an a$$hole sometimes.

I agree i have these too, only had 2 problems with them, 1. my own stupidy i never got an alighment after lifting doh so my front tires on the outside are shot after about 10-20k back tires and the inside of the fronts are brand new still. 2. they are a little scary changing lanes on the highway after it snows, the really grab the slush, but i think any mud tire would do that. for under 100 bucks a tire you really cant go wrong

for traction problems with the MT's sipe or groove them. did this with my thornbirds and it's improved handling 100%. most good tire shops will sipe them for your for like 5 bucks a tire, but you can do like i did and do it yourself with a box cutter.

as far as what tires to go with, I can tell you to stay away from Cooper tires. had a set that came with the jeep when i bought it and they only lasted about 17K miles before wearing out. when i bought it i compared the tread depth to the manufacture's state depth since the PO said they were almost brand new and they had 90% of the tread left. won't be buying these again.

ive heard about siping the tires, but i have no idea where to get them done. know of anyplace in nj that will do them. or do you have any pics of when you did it your self, id much rather do it that way since its cheaper :lol:

[sentinal02]

ive heard about siping the tires, but i have no idea where to get them done. know of anyplace in nj that will do them. or do you have any pics of when you did it your self, id much rather do it that way since its cheaper :lol:

can't say i know of any place in NJ to get it done, but most tire shops will do it for a small fee. as for doing them yourself it's really easy, just time consuming and murder ont he shoulder and fingers :wink:

this is a shot of my front tires. the blue arrows are sipes and the red are the deeper grooves i added:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v608/sentinal02/Misc%20Jeep%20Pics/Tires002.jpg

depending on your paticular needs and lug size you can play with your pattern to get what you want. in this case, my lugs are pretty big as well as deep, so i wanted to break them up more to allow for more tire flex and to give the mud and water someplace to go. sipes by themselves will help a tire with smaller lugs, but if you've got big lugs you want to break them up. you can see in the outer lugs (towards the bottom) where the factory sipes are. no much place for the water to go. this design is directional, but since the base pattern of the lugs is not, i doubt i'll have a problem with it. to get this pattern i used this kind of box cutter:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v608/sentinal02/Misc%20Jeep%20Pics/Cutter.jpg

the kind with the break away blade. depending on you tread depth and how deep you want your sipes you can extend or retract the blade. the sipes are easy, just set the cutter to it's lowest setting (about 1/16 to 1/8") and just slice the top of the lugs with the blade 90° to the surface of the lug so you get a straight up and down cut. going across the tire will give you the best traction, but length wise sipes will help keep you from sliding sideways on the rocks. try and keep about an inch of untouched lug at the leading and trailing edge of the lug though to avoid chunking. also, you might want to only do the inner lugs like i did. for grooving, slide the blade out a bit more and tilt the blade to a 45°. two cuts with the tip of the blade meeting in a V and you can pull the rubber out. be sure to avoid cutting too deep when grooving so you don't puncture the inner wall of the tire. if you've got a heat gun, i'd suggest heating the lug up a bit to soften the rubber just prior to cutting the grooves. that's why a tire groover is heated. it makes drawing the cutter through the rubber much easier. 30 seconds on high heat will be all you need. a blow dryer might work as well but will probably take longer to heat the lugs. how deep and wide you go is up to you and your particular pattern, but i'd try and leave the lower half of the lug whole so you don't tear pieces of it off. you can always go deeper later as the tires wear down. definitely an easy mod and worth doing. took me about 3 hours to do all four tires. HTH

[dmxjg35]

wow, thanks, thats a great write up on how to do that, i have the kumho mt's which have really big lugs so i would do the same thing as you did i guess, looks like ill have to stop at ace hardware and pick up a few box cutters and go at it one weekend. Thanks again for that write up. Maybe they will add a write up section on this site, they should add this.

[XEON]

bfg's at ko's....

YOur tires seem to be really good. The TRXUS MT's I really like them they look really good. Hopefully I can get a set for my YJ :)

[blackdogxj]

i dont know about you guys, ill stick with my Sport King A/T's this is my sec. set and they never let me down, and they r pretty cheap.