I blew out my driver rear tire this weekend on a very modest access trail. It was cruising at 15, maybe 20 mph and I heard & felt a huge boom. I looked in my side mirror to see all the air blasting out.

 

The stock OEM "Offroad" tires are crap (Goodyear Wrangler "Adventure"). Way too soft. I lost two to stones through the tread driving gravel roads.

i ended up swapping for Falken Wildpeak tires at the first opportunity. Good tires! Have not had a flat - so far.

 

Yeah, been looking a Falken. Good to hear you've had a good experience with them.

My stock were actually Pirelli Scorpion Zero 255/60/20. Apparently this incident could be covered by their 6 year warranty since it was a side failure. But they would only allow a claim on 1 tire, while I need to replace all 4. And the claim could only be submitted through their authorized dealer, Les Schwab & Discount Tires, who were both 20% more than Firestone anyway.

Figure at this point I might as well bail on my 20s altogether and upgrade to some 18" steelies. Although I'd prefer to not have to mod my P400 350mm brake calipers.

 

I am also running Wildpeaks. What size are you running? I’m on LT265/60R20 on Style 516 wheels from an LR4 XXV edition. I think I have the only Defender on the planet with these wheels. They have a different offset than the stock wheels, but as you can see in the picture below, it barely misses the knuckle.

 

It bothers me to no end that JLR marketing agreements with the likes of Pirelli and GY may be influencing the JLR decision to not fit Defenders correctly with a viable tire/rim set up? JLR could have kept the 255/70/18 they had, which is on many Wranglers; this would have assured Defender owners would have many tire choices. Or JLR could have used the 265/70/18 that Toyota offers on a LC or GX OT, again assuring Defender owners of many tire options (given the likely volume). If JLR wanted to stick to a 20" rim size, JLR could have sold Defender with 265/60/20, and that too would offer owners loads of tire choices. Somewhere in the design of the rim, JLR totally ignored the end customer.

 

Exact same tire size. I am on OEM stock 19" six spoke black rims 6018 maybe?

They make less road noise as well. Perelli is standard without offroad tires. These 60 series tires are slughtly smaller of course. If you are strictly offroad you probably want more sidewall...

 

I just realized I misspoke - I am on LT265/60R20s, not LT265/60R19s. I have updated my original post.

I've been on some pretty tough terrain and I haven't had any issues with the slightly smaller sidewall compared to the OEM 255/65R19s on Style 6009 rims that I originally specced with the car.

 

No issues with the 18" Goodyear Wrangler ATE's on my 2022 90. Haven't done any extreme off road, but been along some tracks you wouldn't tackle in a 2wd vehicle.

 

Nirth Carolina is full of offloading like Hurricane Creek, Max Patch, Old NC-105 to Wisemans View, etc. I live above 4.5 miles unpaved state 197 behind Mt Mitchell, my way to Asheville instead of Burnsville.

 

I ended up buying a single new Pirelli replacement from Tire Rack & having them shave it down since I still had at least 50% tread left. This'll hold me over temporarily, but ultimately I'm going to swap my brake calipers out and drop down to some steely 18s.