Mile 238K: Left hand canyon, more pics.

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Mile 279,893: Treadwright BFG A/T 30" retreads.

I got 5 treadwright 30" A/T BFG retreads mounted last friday, I've had time to drive them on highway, off-road, and in the snow (light) since then. Here's the verdict:

Fit: These tires fill up the wheel well, giving my XJ a more beefy look. They have very minimal rubbing on turns, and no rubbing in back on flexes (I don't have front disconnects yet....slacker.). My spare tire also fits in the stock mount spot, but does require some fighting with the liftgate to close.

Balance: They balance terribly, no lie. I looked at the spare, two massive weights on one side to balance it out, I can feel some vibe coming from the rear end not being balanced so well.

Road noise: Both on highway and off, these tires are quiet. No more noise than my other ones, even at speeds of 75mph they didn't make much noise at all, would easily blend in with other vehicle noise.

Off-road performance: The tires handled well, even when aired down to 20~25 psi. Very grippy overall, impressive handling on the sandy/rocky trail I went on (see trail report: lefthand canyon).

Weather: I had a few different times to test these out on snow and ice. On the trail, there were a couple spots where there was some old snow on the ground. On regular snow, these tires handled fine, with good grip and plenty of stopping power. On ice, these tires handled decently too, including the patch of ice I went over on about a 30% grade, but I could not start from a dead stop on this patch of ice, I had to back up until I was on gravel; they did hold up their speed alright though.

Delivery time: Alright, I'll give them the holiday mercy for delivery time, but it was still longer than posted. At time of order, delivery time was expected to be 6-10 business days. I called them once, they said they would look into why the delivery was taking so long, and I should get a call the next morning. I did not recieve that call, but after heckling the man I spoke with that day, I finally got a tracking number out of him. After about business day 12, the tires arrived on my front porch, I did not sign for the tires. Because no signature was required, you may want to request a signature upon delivery or else make sure someone is home.

Treadwright service: Service was decent, at best. I ordered over the phone. They were anxious to get my payment information, but gave me very little information on the tires themselves until I asked for it. At the end of the call, I noticed they neglected to mention how much these five tires would be, they said a figure around $400.

Ratings:
Grip: 4.7/5 - Other than a patch of ice I was on, I encountered very little in the way of grip problems, these tires hav excellent traction:
Noise: 5/5 - Way quieter than I expected, also way quieter than comparable A/T tires I have heard on vehicles with them equipped.
Cost: 5/5 - Even after $62.50 mounting fee (the cheapest I could find, Big O tires did mount/balance for this amount, I kept the old tires to resell.), these tires were the cheapest for five all-terrains I could find: $473.40, after all was said and done.
Balance: 3/5 - They're balanced at lower speeds, but develop vibe on the highway after about 60 mph; this shouldn't be too big of a problem since I'm rarely up that high speed.
Treadwright service: 2/5 - The staff was semi-helpful in pointing me in the right direction, but failed to verify information or ship in an expiditious manner. When they promised to call back, they again failed here. I had to call them three different times in order to get the shipping information for my tires, after they were already two days late.

Overall: 4.5/5 - these tires work great for what I need, but I was not very happy with treadwright's performance. The amount of weight these things need to balance also upsets me.

Until next time,
1,000,000 Miles Strong.

Mile 238,000: Trail report - Lefthand canyon.

The friday before this ride when I was getting my tires mounted, I met up with a man named charlie who informed me he was going on a trail ride the next day, after some jeep talk. We headed up lefthand canyon in Boulder, CO. The trail was mostly clear of snow, I made off with only one real bit of trail damage....will talk about at end of story.

Notes:
The mercedez pictured did NOT go on the run, after some serious coaxing with the driver (guy in brown with gelled hair, seen on far right in picture of squeeze)
The tank-looking thing is an old swiss army military vehicle. Carries approx 10 people. Awesome rig, easy to roll though.

Here's the start, us at the 'staging area' for the trail... buckingham park. About 12 rigs were all up on this trail.





Some Pics of us heading up the starting area, before old mother hill.



No pictures of old mother hill or me attempting it, but I'll tell the story: I made it up the first 'half' of the hill (from what I could recall), fighting for every inch of it. When I got to the second little (only in distance) climb, I had a bad approach and decided to try again from a different angle. When attempting to move over to the right side of the trail to try again, I got stuck with my wheels in ruts, apparently stuck on my long body and kinda high-centered (See: Gore). I slid down the hill about 6in, giving everyone below me a real good scare. With some clever help from a rock (thanks to a fella named Hugo), I got unstuck and got myself turned around and headed back down.

Here is a poser pic at the start of mother hill:


More trail:



My favorite light:


After that, we took the branch headed down to the squeeze, 12 rigs does not fit well here, seeing as how this is a pretty popular point and three branches of the trail meet up here. The group split in half here after one group got stuck in front of some ATV's while they were parked on the high trail and had to head on down. Another three decided not to attempt the squeeze and headed back on down the other branch. I actually made it up (will post vid when I get it).
The squeeze:




After that, we continued to follow the trail out to where it dumped out onto the road again. All went well in this part. Overall, a good trail that gave me a lot of experience.


Gore:
A couple scratches on my wheels, nothing to worry about.

A couple dents and dings to my transfer case skid, nothing to worry about.

A scratch on my unibody, just took some of the old dirt off of there. Did you know those things are shiny silver?

The biggie: I dented in the driver's side of my gas tank, which cracked it. It's leaking pretty fast so I'm going to try to replace it this monday.

Things I've learned:
Traction is the magic word! It doesn't matter what lift you have, it matters what kind of traction you have, followed in a very close second by armor.
ARMOR ARMOR ARMOR IS KEY! get your underbelly armored up good and tight, DON'T FORGET THAT GAS TANK!

Bring a sandwich or other easily edible hand-food for lunch, chili in a thermos seems like a great idea at first....but you'll be wrong.

Funny quotes:
"Come on guys, that mercedez is a military vehicle! I have Dana 60's and 1.5mm on the body, full skid plates underneath!" "Yeah, but it's just too pretty to bring up here."

"Hey, Jon (me), you've got a leak over here." "It's not leaking, it's just marking its territory!"

(over CB) "Hey charlie, what's the plan for lunch?" "Eat on the fly." "Do you have any idea how hard it is to eat chili on the fly??"

Until next time,
1,000,000 Miles Strong.