Someone had to do it …

Some Nittos don't have full-depth siping. For me, and the rain I drive in, that's a deal breaker, so I would confirm the Nittos you're looking at have that, at least.

 

I'm currently about 90% confident I'm going with the Toyo OC AT3 tires. Here are my thoughts

The Toyos are proven, are lightweight, have great reviews with the exception of some comments about snow. It rarely snows here in Houston and when it does, we don't go anywhere. But it does rain - a lot. So wet traction is important and the Toyos seem to do well in wet.

The Nittos look great and I like that they are XL load rated. But they are unproven. Not sure I want to be the test mule.

The Falkens look good but I am somewhat jaded by my experience with the stock size AT3W (Japan made). They started out great and i have rotated them every ~7k miles. However, every tire has significant heel toe wear at 25k miles on them. Meaning the outside and inside edge blocks are now shaped like sawteeth on all 4 tires. Higher in the front, than the back (or vice versa - can't remember right now) of each block. They are making a terrible whomp, whomp sound on smooth roads. This could be from running too high pressure but I only run them at 36 psi, so it is not excessively high and my rotations have been front to back - which could contribute. No suspension / ball joint problems either.

Going forward, I will be rotating every 5k in a cross pattern to change tire direction no matter what tires I get.

 

I hadn’t heard of it before. At 37 lbs it’s 2 pounds lighter than the stock Dunlops. Hmmm.

 

From what I can tell the Ascent looks like a great tire in almost all conditions except mud, which is what I deal with here in soggy southeast TX.

 

MT Baja Boss XL - Just got them 2 months ago. Balanced perfectly first try (on Road Force machine). No steering wheel shimmy at all. Was between these and Wildpeaks. Went with MTs because my research showed they stopped much better in the snow, have deeper tread depth, and are a little lighter than the Falkens. Have had them in the snow a few times here in MA and I couldn't be happier.

 

Thanks @2016SR5P now I have one more on my list. I have officially entered analysis paralysis!

 

According to Discount Tire, I just bought the last one in the country this week (in their system, at least).

I guess I'll find out soon if it's any good, lol.

 

That's interesting, I have the exact same mileage and don't have any funny wear. In fact, they're wearing very cleanly (and slowly) in my opinion.

I think you should go back to factory pressure and see how that goes (32 psi).

You might even try the criss cross now, to try and even them up. It would be silly to dump tires that still have good tread on them (even if they are a little noisy).

 

We are on the same page. I'm back to factory pressure and have them crossed over to see if I can get them to even out a bit. Maybe that will help.

The reason I am wanting to swap them out is that I have a trip to Moab coming up and tires are the last thing I need to worry about. It's 1200 miles each way and I plan to do some medium offroading while we are there. Not sure if have the time to see if they even out.

 

Funny you should mention this. I've been lazily rotating a set of K02s front to back every 4,000 for 28,000 miles and they became loud as hell. Rather than ditching them I decided to cross on the recent rotation a few weeks ago to see if that might improve.

What I experienced initially was for the first time the dreaded steering shudder at 60mph which thankfully went away after a few hundred miles and they are definitely quieter rotating in the opposite direction.

I'm changing my rotation pattern moving forward to rear forward with fronts crossed to rear.

 

@5thToy - I certainly wouldn't call rotating every 4k miles lazy and I believe the manual says front to back IIRC. But super interesting that your KO2s got loud as well. Did you happen to notice any irregular wear like the sawtooth shaped blocks I was experiencing? Were you running them above the recommended pressure?

I'm also moving to a rears forward and front crossed to the back rotation sequence. If I pair with oil changes, I'll do it every 5k (people -please don't let this turn into an oil change interval thread).

I think the ideas that @Schlappesepple posted are right on the money. I took mine out for a drive today and the "whomp whomp" is quieter. Still there, just quieter. But it's only been like 75 miles since i crossed both front and rear to the other side and dropped tire pressure to 32.

 

265/70/17 C load at 34-35 PSI. I record tread depths inside, middle and outside at every rotation. Had not noticed any irregular wear.

I followed the manual's front to back rotation while with previous vehicles I'd always used some type of cross pattern. I guess I saw it as "lazy" since it's easier to do one side at a time than jack up and support the entire vehicle for a cross. I don't have a lift. Not really much of a difference I guess but some.

 

I'm on my second set of AT3W's and for the life of the first set I did a rearward cross rotation. Never had issues like you describe. Also, I did initially run them around 34-35psi and found the center was wearing faster so I now run them at 32psi.

 

My centers definitely have worn faster in addition to the strange wear on the edge blocks. I'm guessing the overinflation caused both.
Will be running closer or right at 32 and will cross rotate going forward. Live and learn, I guess.

I measured my tread, and centers are now right at 5/32 and edges are between 7/32 - 9/32 depending on which side of the block you are measuring. A replacement is pretty much my next step. Not enough tread in the center to try and fix the edges by running them on the other side for a while.

Now back to the original topic of the thread, what tires should we buy?

 

Interesting. I've been running my General ATX at 35 psi the whole time, and they actually are wearing quite evenly.

 

How many miles are on them? I thought it wasn't too much.