Noise Police - AT/MT Tyres

MTR's arent Muddies?

I agree, they are racing slicks....

Gawd....

I would place MTR bewtween a cooper ST and a mud tyre like a BFG or Cooper STT. The MTR is not a racing slick either. You can check them out on the Goodyear web site.

Leroy

I dont need to check them on goodyear site, I have 5 of them in the shed right now. Have photos on my site comparing them to the BFG Sideby side the day I got them to replace the BFG MTs.

They are way past a ST, Id compare a Coopers ST with a BFG AT which is the most aggressive AT on the market, and IMHO the MTR is ahead of the BFG MT in terms of using them offroad.

YMMV

where the ST is not a Mud tire... Correct BUT it is the closest thing to a mud tyre that doesn't drum heaps. Mine only drum on smooth tarseal at a steady 40-50kmph. Much more agressive tread than any AT I could find and they clear pretty well (so far). drive well in the wet and on the windy stuff as well.

Forgot to add that the MTR's don't like higher speeds as much as the ST's. The MTR's tend to set up a bit of vibration in the car over 130 Kph.

That was the one thing that initially attracted me the the ST's, they balance up beautifully. The largest weight I had on any of my rims was 80g with two being just 40g - Now if they could just get the tread to hang on to the carcass just a little longer !! , I may be persuaded to go back to them

Mic,

I bought my ST's because they are advertised as 40% dirt/mud use. How is the term 'off road' defined then? One of the blokes in our club got 4 replacement tyres as they chipped and tore blocks off and he used them off road. So did the rep say they were a bitumen tyre only?

Leroy

Leroy,

The damage done to my tyres was from one trip through Burgoynes Gap in Victoria, around six hours of driving through extremely Rocky terrain. My tyres were deflated to 24-25 PSI, I take things pretty easy, so I wasn't bouncing off the rev limiter or anything like that. Two tyre dealers that I took my car to, said that they had never seen anything like that before, and that the tyre carcasses that were left definately should be warranty items, but then the Cooper rep got involved. As it turns out, I finally got warranty through Coopers but it was a fight all the way. Maybe the problems I had were compounded, due to the fact that my brother in law was on the same trip, and also suffered the same tyre degredation as myself, and also wanted warranty at the same time.

Maybe, the rep thought we were both having a lend of him, but between us, we have over 25 years of off-road driving experience, and have never suffered anything like that before or since. I initially thought that we might have had a bad batch but my tyres were 265 and my b-i-l's were 285, so that makes it unlikely that they were the same batch being different sizes.

The Cooper rep told us that we ABUSED our tyres, and had the wrong tyres for the application, and that we should have been sold STT's, as the ST's weren't made for the driving we were doing. I could have pointed out the advertising material in front of me that states 40% off-road, but after the arguments, lack of interest, unreturned phone calls, and general fobbing off, I just wanted to see the back of him.

Maybe he was being swamped by these issues, as i don't think we were the only ones having these problems at the time, and it was his way of protecting the company interests and his job. I sincerely hope that none of you suffer from the same problems, and that you have a good run with the ST's, it's just that I didn't.

I must admit to being quite happy with the tyres before this, but it has left a sour taste in my mouth, and would need a lot of convincing, even to try them again.

G'day Happy GU Owner,
We just got back from a 4 week trip (8,500 klicks) to Cape York. My S/Ts came back looking VERY 2nd hand. I had rotated them just before we left and the one which stayed as a spare the whole trip looked great compared with the others, especially the 2 that were on the back the whole way.
The tyres have now done about 26,000k's. I took them back to where i bought them. The bloke (a mate of mine...small town, you know) who sold em to me measured the tread depth and sure enough they still had about 11mm of tread depth.....but there are lots of chips and chunks missing; not only off the edges of the blocks, but out of the middle of a lot of blocks too.
Most of the trip was on gravel roads (from Lyndhurst in SA right up the top and back as far as Marree, with some stretches of bitumen in between). I ran my tyres at 40psi when on bitumen, 30psi on decent gravel and 22psi on the infamous CY corrogations and OTT.
I will now rotate the spare with the 2 back tyres only and just swap the 2 front ones between themselves until they're ready to be replaced or even up.
MT/Rs are likely to be my next choice, but longevity is the concern with them.
Cya