Ko3 4RUNNER

KO3 on left. Pulled pics from TireRack

 

On top or bottom you mean, weird they are one on top of the other except when I quoted your picture.

 

Yup, they sure do. should make them a little quieter, probably a little worse in mud and sticky snow.

My gripe with KO2's was in snow (wet, sticky kind) and wet performance. that said, they were better in the wet then General Grabber ATx (which hydroplaned so easily) but worse in snow. Neither were bad in powdery snow. Falkens were better all around for me and so far the Toyo OC AT3's have been too. I'll be interested to hear how the KO3 work out.

 

They sure do look less aggressive to me. Less space in between the lugs, especially along the edges. I bet they'll do better than the old ones on the road, but off road will surprise me if it's better. I'll go into what I see in this tread design.

You see that weird "S" shaped lug in the middle? It's leading point is chamfered, that will make it quieter at the cost of a less sharp biting edge. The old tire didn't have any of that. If you look along the middle seam of the tire you also notice the old one has more space too. Having a less space between the outer tread blocks helps with tire noise too. I expect this tire to be quieter, but since open lugs are better for mud it wont self clean as well.

I'm not saying it'll be bad off road, but when you have 2 goals that require contradictory tire designs, you cant have it all. I think that the optimistic view is a very slight decrease in off road situations, but it'll be so much better on road people wont mind as long as it still looks like an attractive off road tire.

 

Sorry about that. The KO3 is first then KO2. On a laptop it shows side-by-side.