New tires in stock size - 4 or 5?

Looking to finally make the purchase on the falken wildpeak a/t3w in stock 265 size.

Wondering if I should get 4 or 5 though, especially since it's stock size.

My understanding is that they will be a bit larger than the stock Dunlop Grandtrek, but if I'm only using the spare in a bit of an emergency situation, surely it's fine to have a single non-matching tire until I can get the 4th tire repaired or replaced?

And I imagine doing a rotation of 4 tires vs 5 is not really gonna meaningfully improve my tire life...

 

You’ll be fine keeping the spare as is, and you would never rotate your spare. That’s for emergency use.

 

I only change the spare if I go with a larger size. Your fine with stock size.

 

Great question, kaitlyn2004! The answer isn’t straight forward. If you never go off road, you can probably get away with a dissimilar spare. In town, your risk of a flat is small, and services are never too far away. However, if you go off road, I’d recommend you have a similar spare. If you drive into somewhere on nice luggy tires, and then get a flat and put on your OEM passenger car type spare you might not get out again. That smooth tire will spin the first chance it gets and you’ll be stuck. Ask me how I know. Also, the risks of a flat are significant off road, a broken valve stem is common damage that’s easy to have happen. That’s why the OR wheels have that little notch designed in them to protect the valve stem. It’s funny that these wheels are swapped out so often for wheels with no valve stem protection.
Actually, in terms of off road, it’s not unusual on far northern Canadian roads in the middle of nowhere to carry two spares. Both of them are, preferably, the same, to be on the safe side.

 

I have no technical info for Wildpeak vs Grandtrek, but based on your finding that the wildpeak would be a bit larger, I would be a bit concerned about uneven tire-wear should the Grandtrek spare ever be used for any EXTENDED period of time/distance. If you think you need 5 matching tires, I would recommend starting with 4 tires and try them out for a month or two. If the new tires perform well, I'd probably at that point replace the spare with a Wildpeak so they all match in "size". Would you be rotating the tires yourself or by a shop? If by yourself, the spare would be difficult to include into the rotation because the spare is mounted on a steel rim and your "regular" tires are on alloys.

For reference, I have a set of all-season (stock Bridgestone Dueler) and winter (Michelin) tires. Both are stock size. The winter tires are on the truck now, and my spare is the stock all-season Dueler. I am the type who likes to get things fixed as soon as possible ... so am comfortable using a mis-matched tire as a replacement for the short-term.