I can't say for your winter conditions, but I had the GY Wrangler Adventure tires last year in winter in colorado and they were not good - especially on packed snow / ice. I like a good winter tire, so your mileage may vary based on your past experiences and preferences. For me, i wasn't going to go through another winter with that tire.

 

I spend a lot of time in the Appalachian snow belt and I have a set of winter wheels with Pirelli winter tires which are excellent. Got caught in one storm with the Adventures before I switched and never again. I just don’t understand why people take $80K trucks loaded with your family and risk life and limb driving on crappy all seasons in the snow, especially non 3 peak rated. All it takes is one slide off the side of the road into a tree or an oncoming truck to ruin your day/life. And there is still a substantial difference even between 3 peak rated AT’s and true snow tires. Snow tires are just better, especially on ice, as all the tests show. That difference in stopping distance could mean your life. If you drive a lot in snow, and want to be as safe as you can, the only choice is to have a second set of winters.

 

BFG K02's are legendary I have had them on my Jeep and several 4X4 trucks. When it came time for a new set of tires on my Ford F-250 Diesel I chose the new Mickey Thompson Baja Boss AT's. My truck spends most of the time on pavement and these tires handle well and provide very precise steering and handling, uncommon in an off road tire. I was replacing a set of Nitto Trail Grapplers which are loud and don't do well on wet pavement after they have some miles on them. The Baja Boss does pretty well off road in mud for an AT. As soon as my 90X arrives I'm installing a set of them.

 

This look really nice. Now my only question is whether I do the 18” caliper swap and get those beautiful Alston wheels, or just stick with the 20’s.

 

The Alston's are sweet for sure. I'm on the fence as well, trying to justify for only 1" more of sidewall. My calipers are orange and after a road test in a Defender with 20's the braking is awesome much like my 911. To change to blander looking calipers and a little less braking performance I'm probably going to stay with the 20's for a while. Besides I just spent $2,800 on Lucky8 Winch kit and I don't even have my Defender yet!

 

I'm considering this swap as one of my first mods... on the fence between the full mod and switch to 18's, or just put KO2's on the 20's for now. Do we know how much braking performance is lost? I know the same pads / discs are used, but I'm assuming there is less force applied to the pads when you brake? I was sort of hoping they had the same braking force in a smaller package, but I figured that's unlikely...

 

I'm sorry I don't know for sure, I can only assume the braking is better with the 20's vs 18's.

 

My Defender is coming with 20" wheels and 380mm rotors. They guys at Lucky8 told me their kit will not fit my larger rotors and that they currently do not have that upgrade kit available. My experience with many vehicles of all types has been larger Rotors = better braking performance.

 

I've been curious about this too.

I'm no nechanic. Far from it, quite the idiot with most things car related but I was thinking that given the same pads and rotors are used, the braking force resulting from friction between pads and rotors should remain unchanged within normal driving conditions. I guess with towing or sudden application of the brakes, the maximal braking may be reduced as a result of the smaller caliper. Smaller may not mean less powerful though.

 

You could make a housing that is smaller or larger without changing the clamping force of the brake pistons or the size of the brake pad friction surfaces, at least theoretically. But one assumes that LR would have put some effort into a rear caliper that works on all models rather than having to deal with slightly different calipers for the 300 and 400, if they could have met ALL the metrics the brake engineers had to meet and still fit the smaller calipers to the 400. Since they didn’t I have to assume that something forced them to forego the smaller rears of the 300 in order to meet ALL of the requirements, some of which you and I have no doubt never even thought of.

But what I’ve not seen anyone address is this: Why is it the REAR calipers causing the problem with 18” wheels? Front calipers are always the largest, even on mid-engine and even rear-engine cars, where more of the weight is being handled by the rear wheels. But on a nose-heavy pig of a truck like the Defender, the front calipers and rotors ought to be twice as large as the rears, and the ones causing fitment problems.

Anybody know why it’s the rears?



Here are the GT3/GT4 fronts (left) and rears (right). The fronts are 6-piston 380mm, and the rears are 4-piston 350 mm, iirc.