Thread: Report on General Grabbers

I agree GG AT2's do bag a bit so you dont need to airdown quite as much. I may go to around 26psi front and 28psi rear for those rocky/stoney forestry tracks or quite often leave them at (slightly soft) road pressures 36psi front and 38psi rear with no issues (yet).

One difference is I'm running 255/65/R16's so the extra 1" in side wall probably gives better absorbtion.

Grip wise, excellent on wet or dry bitumen and mud (for an AT)

Hey Tim,

I agree. I had the GG's on my D3. I tore one without knowing on a trip to Coffs harbour, was scrambling up a shaly piece of track and must have sliced the side wall. Didnt realise till we were doing 100kms + and rear felt washy. Pulled over it was flat. I had put up an assessment somewhere on the GG's in that they are a better option to the wranglers in terms of grip. In terms of strength, when aired down there is little or no protection for sidewall or rim. I came back from that trip and the new rims I had were chipped to pieces. I also had to have another GG repaired, though on that occasion it could have happened to another tyre. If I had kept the D3, I was looking at Mickey Thompson MTZ's in a 275, as I had the V8..18 inch rims were my minimum.

Regards

Stevo

Tim - it's never a good thing to wreck tyres and rims - but it's worse when they are relatively new.

Supporting a comment from Stevo, I can vouch for the Mickey thompson MTZ's - I had mine on for 24 hrs before the Sundown trip - no chips, no damage - brilliant grip.

The Mickeys sidewalls "stand up" - even when aired down - and are actually a reasonable tyre on road too. My attitude is - if you're going to swap between road and offroad tyres - go all the way!

Unfortunately massive rim size leaving only enough room for lower profile tyres are the one big drawback of the modern 4WD (bar defender and base models of various brands). There are times when you should air down and having the best traction control systems in the world are not going to get such vehicles everywhere, or at the least do so kindly to the vehicle and the track...and the result will be damaged rims and tyres (unless you have a whole set of spare rims and tyres to go offroading with which is a giant pain for most people and very expensive).

Cheers

If you're going to spend $100 000 or so on a new 4WD, I don't see spending $600 on 4 x 17" steel rims and a set of decent off-road tyres as overly expensive. It's probably the responsible thing to do. Tyres on the 17" rims will give more than adequate flotation - I've never had a problem with the D3 in sand.

I agree that the Mickey Thompson MTZ is an excellent off-road tyre, and pretty good on-road too. I had them on my D3 for 20 000 or so km, before I got the Mickey Thompson ATZ for on-road use. Can't say enough good things about them.

Cheers,

Gordon

Thanks for the replies guys,

I should probably clarify some things here. I bought General Grabbers after a long process of trying to find out something about every tyre that would fit and after reading lots of posts on forums both here and overseas. I also took into account the legalities of changing tyres here in Queensland. There is also an issue with the model that I have with rear airconditioning that has some pipes inside a plastic bump in the back wheel arch. This apparently causes rubbing and eventually damage to the pipes if the tyres are too large.

Legally here in Queensland we cannot increase the diameter of the tyre by more than 15mm, have to have at least the same load rating and as far as I can work out we cannot put on a tyre with a lower speed rating. More than anything the speed rating limits the available tyres. I have a very expensive vehicle that I am willing to take off road and the cost of the steel rims is not that much compared to the vehicle but I still want my insurance to pay out if I damage it seriously.

I'm kind of p***ed off at the moment because it seems like I made the wrong decision despite all the work I put into trying to make the right one. I believed that I had the right compromise of still legal but tough enough to take offroad. It may come down to running tyres that are technically illegal and hoping that no one will notice. That's a pretty big gamble though. It would be great if we had the national code here in Qld that allowed up to 50mm increase, though I am not sure what it says about speed ratings.

One thing extra too - The first puncture happened with 24psi in the tyres which exposed the sidewalls way too much. After that we put 30psi in all tyres and still the second puncture happened. I am not sure if that is also when the rim damage happened as that appeared to still be holding air and may have happened earlier. After that we went up to 40psi with one standard wrangler now on the wheel and did not have another puncture but by then we were almost through anyway.

Tim.

IIRC you can put on a tyre with a lower speed rating, and limit your speed, not that that will effect anyone in Australia, but not a lower load rating.

How did the unbalanced tyre on the front go on the way home?

CC

Tim,

To keep legal and still have a robust set of tyres for touring/offroad, I'd recommend getting a set of 17" rims and shod them with 245/70/17 Cooper STT. Alternatives are Maxxis Bighorn, made in 255/65/17 or 245/70/17 and 114Q rating. Kumho make a 265/65/17 AT tyre, but I'm not sure of the load rating?

Cheers,

Gordon