Back when I bought my truck new in spring 2011 ( a reg. cab short box 2wd WT), it was equipped the General Grabber HTS tires sized P245/70R17. Being in the tire industry for almost 30 years I'll admit that when I took delivery of the truck, I noted the Generals on it & didn't really have high expectations for them. But after driving them a bit I really didn't have any real complaints about them. Noise levels were surprisingly quiet, dry and wet grip were not an issue, ride comfort at the manufacturers recommended pressure of 35 psi was quite good. While I wouldn't say they did anything exceptional, they did what they needed to do well enough that I chose to keep them on the truck. The only thing I didn't really care for was the softish sidewall that would tend to roll over during cornering giving the truck a vague, dull steering response. To address that issue I put my temp gun to work & found that I actually needed to run 39 psi front and 38 psi rear to get an even tire temp across the face of the tire. This improved the steering response noticeably & made the tires wear dead nuts even over their life on my truck, but the tradeoff was the trucks ride suffered obviously, and became a little skittish across bumps. I felt the improvement to the steering and the improved wear was an acceptable tradeoff to the loss of ride comfort, so that is how they ran for the majority of their life on my truck. At the time they were removed they had absolutely perfect wear across the tire and had 8/32" remaining with 63,000 kms on them after 6.5 years of service. Typically I would not replace a tire with that kind of tread remaining on them still, however over the last 6 to 8 months the wet performance deteriorated very rapidly going from the odd slip here and there, to rolling burnouts everywhere if the roads were wet at all. Ultimately that is what prompted the change.
Given that this is a 2wd sport truck I wasn't interested in an aggressive all terrain style tire, I wanted to enhance the sport truck look.....the OE tires looked pretty skinny on it! The second thing I wanted to address was the high inflation required to get an even tire temp.....this was going to require a larger tire to lower the inflation. Those 2 factors lead my to select a P265/65R17 as a replacement size. Same diameter as the originals, just wider. After much searching around I made the decision to give the nod to a set of Kumho Crugen HT51's......they checked off all my boxes.
After installing them, the first thing I did was get the inflation set to get even tire temps. That happened to occur at the factory recommended 35 psi. With the lower pressure ride comfort is greatly improved, only now it doesn't come at the expense of steering response or poor wear. Handling is quite good now, I'm pleased. Noise levels are a wash.....some road surfaces the new tires are slightly louder, some road surfaces they actually are quieter. No complaints at all regarding noise. Wet performance has improved monumentally as it should. In short, every aspect of this tire & size combination is an improvement over the OE tires.
But the thing I think I like the best..........they look way better on the truck!!!
20170826_110201 by Shane Hewitt, on Flickr
Given that this is a 2wd sport truck I wasn't interested in an aggressive all terrain style tire, I wanted to enhance the sport truck look.....the OE tires looked pretty skinny on it! The second thing I wanted to address was the high inflation required to get an even tire temp.....this was going to require a larger tire to lower the inflation. Those 2 factors lead my to select a P265/65R17 as a replacement size. Same diameter as the originals, just wider. After much searching around I made the decision to give the nod to a set of Kumho Crugen HT51's......they checked off all my boxes.
After installing them, the first thing I did was get the inflation set to get even tire temps. That happened to occur at the factory recommended 35 psi. With the lower pressure ride comfort is greatly improved, only now it doesn't come at the expense of steering response or poor wear. Handling is quite good now, I'm pleased. Noise levels are a wash.....some road surfaces the new tires are slightly louder, some road surfaces they actually are quieter. No complaints at all regarding noise. Wet performance has improved monumentally as it should. In short, every aspect of this tire & size combination is an improvement over the OE tires.
But the thing I think I like the best..........they look way better on the truck!!!
20170826_110201 by Shane Hewitt, on Flickr
