Toyo M55F tyres

Hi Tony

I only have the Toyo AT2 LT Open Country , not those tyres.

I love the AT2 and so far they have done 60k and still not 50% worn. My old Bridgestone would only get about 30k for the 50% wear, so this shows just how great the Toyo’s are.


Cheers


Stephen

Have since come across the 'hybrid' tyres from Toyo & Nitto - the R/T & the Ridge Grappler. The Toyo R/T (Rugged Terrain) looks very promising, but they aint cheap!

No tyre. Is bulletproof, no matter how strong the sidewall is.

True cross country travel is very hard on tyres and I have seen the strongest tyres suffer as quick as a ordinary LT tyres.

Are do doing true cross country, mulga country travel, or normal outback tracks?

Either way, the LT would be a cheaper starting point

No 'off track' travel, at least not for any distance. Probably the roughest tracks we've done have been the Munja Track down to Walcott inlet, & the Gibbie & Humbert tracks up through the Gregory NP, & perhaps some of the tracks in the Karlamilyi NP, but that's not really the point though. Even on 'highways' like the Gibb River rd, or the Oodnadatta track we have always had the issue of feeling uncomfortable about lowering our tyre pressures as much as we would like to, because the side walls of the D697 LT's get so close to the ground, & are vulnerable to any sharpish rock we may be unlucky enough to hit. We lost a 10 day old tyre that way coming out of Mornington Wilderness Camp, an unseen rock on an otherwise sandy section of track , travelling at 50kph. A 3" gash in the sidewall. Just bad luck, but only because of the side wall bulge, & even then the rear tyres had 42psi hot in them. In rocky terrain, choosing tyre pressure is always more of a compromise than I'd like, so choosing replacement tyres with stiffer sidewalls is a priority when we replace them .

Just for interest here's a pic of my passenger side rear tyre with only about 12,000kms on it. I have heard stories about differing quality of the D697's according to country of manufacture. I believe my first set wore far better than this!

Far out, that’s not very good for only 12k.....Where were they driven?

I will take a picture of my Toyo’s tomorrow with 60k

Mine have done the Tanami, eastern Kimberley, out to Nhulunbuy, Cape York,, Birdsville Track, 2 trips on the Oodnadatta Track, Strezelecki Track,, very rough 4 trips through the Flinders, Maralinga, back tracks station country east of Burra, Roxby Downs, Kingoonya, Tarcoola, GawlervRanges, Duncan Track in the Kimberley.....all towing my Ultimate Camper, plus lots of other tracks I can not think of at the moment.

Compared to your picture, I would class mine as new....lol

Broome to Cairns via north Kimberley, Gregory np, limmen np & most recently SW Cape York including quite a few station tracks, mostly in good condition. All towing Tvan. The Gregory NP & Munja track was probably the hardest on tyres, but I do think the pictured one has worn particularly badly. The other 3 are in much better condition.

That tyre appears to have been run overinflated. It doesn’t matter what brand you run if the pressures aren’t right for the surface. Sometimes that means dropping pressure and speed. I also made a set of tyres look like that on the old Plenty. An extra 5 psi drop meant they chipped no more. I dropped from 32 to 27 psi. Heavy sidewalls are a double edged sword as they also require much more pressure to carry the same weight as a lighter sidewall tyre. Sounds counterintuitive I know.

Thanks for your input Gbc. Whilst I cannot categorically state that the tyre was not 'over-inflated', I do not believe this to be the case. I ran the rear pressures the same as I had the previous set of D697's from which I got 60,000kms, without that sort of chipping damage. However it is fair to say that the current tyres have seen a fair bit of rougher, rocky roads & tracks. When I blew a 10 day old tyre coming out of Mornington Wilderness camp, & got it replaced at Nev's 'Over the Range' tyre place on the GRR, first thing he asked me was what pressure I was running. 42psi - he told me the sidewall damage had been 'just bad luck' as he considered the pressure appropriate for the weight & the conditions. 42 psi was the 'hot' pressure. Cold was 36 psi. As far as speed goes we know we have a lot of weight, & are very conservative with our speed, we don't have schedules to keep & we are slow. I can (& have) drive all day at 20kph when needed. Even on the bitumen we rarely average more than 80kph. The other factor is that the driver side rear wheel, run at the same pressures, whilst a little chipped, is nowhere near as bad as the one in the photo.

Since writing the above paragraph, a little light went on in my head! :) I recalled that when the blown tyre was replaced on the GRR, that the new one obtained there went onto the drawbar of the Tvan, & the unused one which had been on the drawbar was put on the car. It was the rear passenger side wheel. So I did a bit more checking.

I checked the dates on the Tvan tyres & the badly chipped one on the car. All the same 2014 date! I had thought they were younger than that. So the chipped tyre is 6 years old, & I suspect that this is why it has been more damaged than it's 2019 counterpart on the driver side rear. Rubber that has hardened. The part worn 2 spares we have carted around the country for the past couple of years , untouched during that time are 2013! The more I think about it the more I think the majority of the chipping damage occurred fairly recently, most likely on one particular weekend where we towed the Tvan up some long, steep & very rocky tracks in the hills west of Mareeba, around Irvinebank.

I also checked my records. Since new tyres were fitted in Broome we have covered 15,000kms , so a bit more than my estimate of 12,000. The tyre in the photo had done perhaps 700kms less, so not a major difference to my earlier estimation.

So whereas I was thinking that new tyres were going to be needed in the near future, I now think it best to replace all the 2014/13 ones before any further remote area trips. With the spare from Nev's place, on the Tvan also a 2019, I think the following replacement strategy probably makes the most sense, safety-wise & economically.

Remove the 3 x 2019 part worn D697's from the car & put them on the Tvan (including one as a spare).
Buy 5 new tyres (probably Toyo M55F's or RT's) for the car (including one spare) & keep the current 2019 Tvan Spare as the second spare on the car. This does mean that it may be possible at some point to mix tyre brands on the same axle, not something I would usually do, but as a fallback second spare option to get me out of trouble it doesn't seem unreasonable.

Thoughts anyone?

I should add that the process of writing in this thread itself has been a useful part of the process & I thank all who have contributed.

"The more I think about it the more I think the majority of the chipping damage occurred fairly recently, most likely on one particular weekend where we towed the Tvan up some long, steep & very rocky tracks in the hills west of Mareeba, around Irvinebank."

That will do it. Any time I've chipped them that badly it has happened quickly, and on chipped rock terrain or recently graded road where the grader hits virgin seam and chips it. (Plenty, Pilbara, once on a silly little day trip on the Mt Mee tourist drive which had been recently graded) It doesn't take long at all unfortunately. Each time, lowering them further helped no end.

I wouldn't think running different treads of the same size on the trailer for a short while would be an issue, apart from passing a roadworthy (tyres on the same axle need to match on cars, I'd assume it is the same for trailers?). I agree, older tyres harden and chip easier than new pliable ones.

Here we go Cuppa.

Yes a genuine 60k with some very rocky tracks and all towing our Ultimate.
The first photo is from 3 weeks ago, where we covered 2.5k of nearly all tracks like this.

The only only thing I should have said was I rotate the tyres every 5k, with the exception of our Cape York trip were we did 12k before rotating the tyres when we got back home.

Like I said, all towing and 60k.....you be the judge.

Thanks Stephen. Certainly a big difference! Mind you I guess there is rocky & rocky. We have certainly been on plenty of roads like that in your pic, but as far as 'rockiness' goes, in comparison to some of the tracks we've towed our Tvan on it does look quite 'mild'. The track I now think we probably did most damage on was was around 3 hours in low range & on a rockiness scale of 1 to 10 if your pic were a 2, the one I'm thinking of would have probably been an 8 or 9!

Your tyre looks to be in a similar condition to the two 60,000km /2013 spares I currently have on the Patrol, but with a bit more tread depth. Also similar to the 15,000km old 2019 I have on the the driver side rear.
I am growing in confidence re my belief that it was one particular track plus tyre age (6 years) which has resulted in the damage in the pic I posted.

Oh yes, I should also set the record straight, I inferred earlier that the country of manufacture may have resulted in differing quality of the tyres. I checked all 9 of them. All made in Japan, so that was also ruled out.

Regarding LHRear tyre wear.
If the vehicle is heavily loaded AND towing too and often loaded a little heavy on the LHS, PLUS any camber of the road, the resulting tyre wear and chipping will increase markedly as THAT tyre is holding more and under more stress. It will actually be running slightly flatter/squashed even if tyre pressure is same as RHS. Since many rocks are presented to rear tyres from front wheel tread action , that LHS rear has got less ability to absorb the rock shapes because of it's increased loading. Little wonder it suffers. That corner wheel bearing is often the one which fails too and that is the side which gets more pothole shocks as well.

RMD, your description fits well with how we run, & the fact that the passenger side rear tyre always runs a little hotter & rises a couple of psi more than the driver side would seem to confirm what you say. Add to that a 6 year old hardened tyre, which during it’s approx 13 months & 14,000 kms in use has seen at least 10,000 kms of off road use, some in fairly tyre-unfriendly conditions, it is probably surprising that it held together as well as it did!

On various reviews of them. All the tyres I have looked at are LT construction. In the size I use they have a 123 load rating. Put a set of 265/75 R16 LT D697's on my vehicle next to a similar weight vehicle with Toyos or BFG's & the sidewall bulge at the same pressures is quite noticeable. Initially I thought that just buying AT2's or K02's would be the way to go, but then read reviews today with others complaining similarly to me about excessive sidewall bulge . I believe the sidewalls on my D697's are 2 ply, but some others have 3 ply ..... but even then it appears there is 3 ply & 3 ply! It may well be far less of an issue on your Prado than on my heavy Patrol.

If you don't mind the extra wear, why not go to M/T's.

Road noise & increased fuel consumption & we haven’t really had any need for the extra traction to date.

You can hear a vehicle coming a mile away with the hum, hum, hum of MT tyres on the bitumen, so imagine what it would sound like in the cabin.

Living in the country and seeing lots of station vehicles, guess what they run?

It’s not MT, but AT tyres

Interesting Cuppa. In that size both the D697 and Toyo AT2 have outstanding 123R ratings!!!

My Prado's wheel size limits choice significantly and I'm not inclined to go bigger or wider. Had 697s on the Jackaroo and was considering those when the time comes to replace the Dunlops but I think there must be better tyres around. From my experience the 697s are highly reliable and pretty much indestructible but pretty average on wet blacktop and for wear.

Bazooka - I think the 123R load rating (1550kg per tyre iirc) in 265/75 R16 is pretty common across the LT range from most manufacturers. It was one of the main reasons I changed to that size (from the 245 - I think, 'cheese cutters' on split rims which were on the car when I bought it ex Telstra,) That & the fact that I had to run them at max pressure (60psi) to hold up the weight. The larger tyres enabled a drop in pressure by around 1/3rd & I no longer felt I was driving a blowout waiting to happen.

In many respects the D697's have been excellent tyres, & I suspect would be a good choice for vehicles lighter than mine. Puncture resistance through the tread is great. I never had puncture like that (only the one sidewall gash), & recall pulling out an old nail from the tread picked somewhere in the Idalia NP & waiting for the hiss which never came. Nail was around 2" & had gone in at a bit of an angle luckily, but I was impressed, & the tyre lasted many more kilometres, in gfact I think it's one of the two spares I am now replacing. Grip on & off road has never been an issue, although I haven't done a lot of wet muddy driving, but damp red clay tracks in the Barrington Tops were no problem, nor any of the river crossings with wet exit banks.

Hi Bob

How long have you had them?

Just interested in your last comments, that all. I have them and find them fantastic.

Cheers

Stephen

Hi Bob, I heard from Baz. He does indeed have the M55F's , has had them several years now & likes them. His comments about using them on a heavier vehicle were encouraging. Unfortunately after a ring around of the Cairns & Tablelands tyre places best I could come up was just two, with no known date for any more arriving within the next 3 months. Apparently a Covid impact on tyre supplies more generally. However I have been able to get 5 x Toyo RT's (hybrid AT/MT) which have similar sidewall strength, albeit with some extra 'fashion statement' side 'protection'. To date my concerns have been more about rock damage to sidewalls than vegetation staking, so I'm happy to buy these. Prices are better than the internet suggested too at $300 each. Getting them fitted tomorrow morning.

Ta-da! The new tyres. Toyo RT's.

Have only driven the 30kms home on bitumen so far. Seem quiet enough, possibly slightly louder than the Bridgestone D697 AT's, but hard to be sure. Took way less weights to balance than I'd had on the Bridgestones. 60g on each tyre I think. The Bridgestones had double that on both sides of the rim! Both my wife & I felt that the tyres were absorbing bumps in the road better than the Bridgestones too, on much the same pressures.

Stephen,

First fitted a set mid-2018, so have done about 32K since then. Have done a couple of sidewalls, one in Rudall NP & the other on CSR, last year. Seem to be wearing well though, certainly better than the BFG's we used for about 12 years.

Bob