Hey guys,

I'm looking at a couple long term upgrades and wanted to get your opinions. I need to replace my tires and from what I've found treadwright sound great for the price.

I'm looking at either a 245/75/16 Warden or potentially a 235/70/16 Puma.

This truck is my daily driver and I haven't gotten the chance to get as dirty as I'd like but that's coming. If anyone has had any experience with either or other treadwrights I'd love to hear your take. I'm looking to balance road noise with off road capabilities. Presently don't have a lift and I'm not planning on getting one anytime soon as I just barely fit into the garage as it is.

I'm open to any other recommendations as well.

Thanks!

 

I run 245/75 with my 2. " lift , iirc some guys say they fit with stock springs but depending on your current size tire, they may make the truck taller

 

That helps thank you. I've seen a couple second hand accounts of the 245/75/16 fitting on a stock truck and I'm hoping to hear from someone directly.

If I ended up having to park in the driveway it wouldn't be the worst thing ever.

 

No idea how the fit will work.

I have been running the guard dogs from treadwright for years and couldn't be happier with the wear and performance of the tires. I would buy them again no issues.

 

I recently read the book: Tragic Indifference (One man's battle with the auto industry over the dangers of SUV's) by Adam l. Penenberg [AKA: Blood Highway], which is an extremely interesting and in-depth look at the Ford Explorer/Firestone debacle. It isn't really an anti-SUV book but chronicles the series of bad decisions by both Ford and Firestone, over the whole Explorer and exploding tire ordeal back around 2000, the people involved, the ramifications and so on. It gives the reader a lot of corporate inside baseball (which I thought was really interesting) and insight into how they denied a problem, while sending corporate lawyers around the country to settle lawsuits, buy up and immediatly scrap people's wrecked cars so they couldn't make a good legal case, tactics to stall and stifle lawsuits and ultimately passed blame to each other. I never really understood the extent of the issues back then, other than one of my best buddy's co-workers was killed in a company vehicle (Ford Explorer) on an open rural highway in SD on a sunny day from what appeared to be an exploding tire (but ultimately couldn't prove). Anyway, I found the book to be an extremely fascinating read and highly recommend it. Really makes ya think.

What does this have to do with Land Rovers and tires? Well, we have narrow track SUV's with a high center of gravity, higher than the Ford Explorer. Even worse yet: these Disco's have somewhat evil handling characteristics at high speed with their short wheel bases and other design factors (understeer is induced by lowering the air pressure in the front tires for god's sakes!! ....one of the major culprits of the Firestone exploding tire issue). But more than anything, what became apparent in the book, are Firestone (and Cooper tires) factory employees telling about numerous short cuts and pi$$ poor manufacturing practices that produced probably thousands of unsafe tires. People on the assembly line couldn't hardly get the belts to stick together but were told to keep making tires ...managers peeling 'reject' stickers off stacks of bad tires and replacing with 'approved' stickers so they could meet their quota. Some guys wouldn't stamp the tire when they finished because they knew it was a bad product. Firestone had many tires blew up ....while at the same time other mfgrs didn't have that problem. Not condemming Firestone's recent products, but I've had some issues with Coopers in the past, they make a lot of these no-name, off brand tires.

So I guess, my overall point is, whatever size you pick out, don't skimp on quality to save a few bucks. Better to be a little poorer but a lot safer.

Here's the book:

 

Treadwright is very proud of the product they make and for good reason. I ran 31 10.5 guard dogs on my 95 explorer without issue. Even driving home at 65mph after I had to air down to 8psi to get out of the woods. Excellent product at a great price. And soon my stock height 98 d1 will get a set of 245/75r16 guard dogs. I'm currently running the same size firestones and they rub at full lock.

 

markg you are right

Ive had a blowout at 70+ mph in a disco and if it werent for bouncing off the dividing wall (after doing a 180) I dont think Id be here. Also got real lucky that the surrounding vehicles were out of the way. I had some no name 265 75 16 ATs on it at the time. Ill never run crappy tires again. Skip the treadwrights if you are going to be driving over 30mph. They are crappy tires

 

Robert, sorry to hear about your incident, glad you're still around.

A statistic from the book (Also see Wikipedia Bronco II) which I thought was staggering was insurance institute's estimates that prior to the Explorer one in 500 Bronco II's sold ended in a roll-over fatality. One in 500! That's deaths, not injuries. Think about that for a moment. How would you like those odds? Some insurers refused to insure Bronco II's after a while. According to ford's engineering documents upper management was well aware of handling problems and canceled the engineering J-turn test during the design phase because they were afraid engineers would get hurt. Despite numerous warnings by engineers and ways to improve stability (fairly expensive changes), they didn't do it. I had a buddy who had a Bronco II, I always thought they were neat vehicles. Guess what, he totaled it in a roll-over, but didn't get hurt. I wish I hadn't read that, because I had considered getting a Bronco II to play around with, now I'm not sure... The stability issues were similar with the first Explorers, where they knew the vehicles would behave erratically in a sudden turn but it ended up being something like 1 in 2700 vehicles resulted in a roll-over DEATH, IIRC. I don't know what Discovery roll-over rate is, I would imagine it to be pretty high. Land Rover at the time was probably small enough to fly under the radar since they sold so few Discos, or maybe it just wasn't as big of an issue because, as I recall, Discoveries were shipped new with Michelin tires, which are generally known for top quality. Would be interesting to know. I once owned a Gen II Explorer (Sans Firestone ATX tires) and to me it handled more stable than my disco. Obviously not as fun to drive though!

The other issue which was a major contributor to blow-outs was running tires at low tire pressure. Ford specified 26lbs which is less than Firestone's minimum which they indicated was not less than 30 for highway speeds. But they reluctantly agreed to 26 psi (one of their big mistakes). Their engineers explained the affect of low pressure operation is to eventually work the belts loose at the edge of the tire which eventually the delamination creeps towards the center of the tire and can lead to complete belt separation --made even worse with poor manufacturing practices. There was an early rash of tire belt separations with Explorer/Firestone rollovers and deaths in Saudi Arabia which was attributed to people 'airing down' tires in the desert, and hot temps. Firestone pointed to Ford specifying a tire pressure of 26 lbs on the early Explorers (to aid stability) as one of the problems. They indicated not less than 30psi was recommended. That gets me thinking because my 98 Disco tire pressure specification is 26 (Front), 36 (Rear). Low front air pressure induces understeer (better handling, an old racing trick), which I'm sure Land Rover did to compensate for half-baked engineering, and indeed if I run all tires at 35 psi, on my vehicle at least, the vehicle really oversteers like a bitc#! , almost to the point of being unsafe. What tire pressures do you guys run?

I'm not trying to be preachy or anti-suv. I've got several SUV's and I love them all, and obviously not all tires are going to blow up. My hope is to raise awareness so fellow Disco owners can think about their tires and safety (something we often overlook) to get back from work or the trail safe. These are fun vehicles to own and drive.

As a complete aside, it's interesting to note the impactful changes to modern SUV's this whole Explorer/Firestone debacle had, with all the lawsuits, investigations, government hearings and so fourth. For example, low tire pressure monitoring, SUV's being wider and lower slung (even the Jeep Wrangler), roof crush standards increased significantly (apparently Explorer roofs would cave in really easy resulting in head injuries), move towards independent rear suspension. I bet Disco roofs collapse pretty easily too. When you are driving around, just look at how some of the vehicles have changed since, say, 2003-2005.

 

it was over 5 years ago, and I drove it to work today so its all good, with goodrich tires that is

 

Treadwright uses quality carcasses like Michelin, bfg, Goodyear, and toyo. They simply add more rubber to em. So all this talk of companies skipping steps and making a poor quality product just doesn't apply. It more so comes down to making sure your air pressures suit your load or you'll overheat the sidewall and cause a blowout