there is a risk of opening a can of worms when it comes to balancing and out of round tires etc. which is well documented
This is true...for flat centers. For pressed centers there are far fewer issues with balancing.
Slightly out of round tires or out of balance tires can often be dealt with by spinning them on the rim. BTDT with one of mine.
You absolutely need to get a shop that is decent at assembling these to work with them. Trail Worthy Fab isn't a tire shop, they're a fab shop. They do no balancing and don't assemble them that well. But again, that's not their job function. Most of my issues were resolved with tearing two rims apart, and putting them back together properly. I still have some vibes from the other two rims, but not significant except over 70 MPH. Those will be getting redone when I tear them apart to paint.
A lot of the folks that I've seen that have issues (and yes, I've read those threads) either are DIY or have flat centers. If you don't have a tire balancing machine, you can't tell how the weight is being distributed and can't tell how to spin the tire on the rim to reduce or eliminate it. TWF flat out says that flat centers aren't for road use.
most 80 owners will not want to deal with let alone have to deal with a 145 lb wheel/tire
They're heavy, no doubt about it. A lot of weight can be saved by using alloy rims, or light steel rims which aren't terribly expensive. I don't have a problem with them, and it's a DD for me. Nearest wheeling to me is over an hour away (mostly freeway). Next closest is about 7 hours either north or south. So freeway driving is a big deal breaker for me, so far no complaints about these (or at least none that I don't expect to get resolved when I get the other two tires rebuilt).
I would never run a retread tire on vehicle that is a daily driver and you carry family and friends in regardless of what people say its just wrong on all levels
That's absolutely your choice, but all the studies done have shown that retreads are no more dangerous than new tires. Treadwright has a
lot of tires out there with
very little complaints about them, 99% of the feedback is positive. And a lot of the tires they sell are designed for DD, not the occasional wheeler.
Retreads are used for far more demanding applications than our light truck use, including commercial trucking and airliners. If retreads hold up just as well as new (according to studies/research done and IRL), then what's the problem?
FWIW I'm running Treadwright's BFG AT style tires on the
rig. The tire shop that installed them were
very impressed with them, you can barely tell they are retreads and the mounted and balanced with less weight than most new tires. And they were initially very leery about installing them.
And I will say it again,
There must be a reason more people are not running these tires even if it is such a great deal.
That argument is a rather poor one. If LC's are such great vehicles, why isn't everyone running one instead of a hummer/jeep/etc? Slee shortbus bumpers must suck because they're way less popular than ARB's.
Just because not everyone and their brother is running one has nothing to do with how good or poor a choice it is. And I don't think anyone's saying that these are the cats meow, there are a lot of down sides to them (like any other tire/rim choice).
I will tell you one big reason, and that's the fear of the unknown. Ordering something like this essentially blind is something that a lot of people don't care to do. I know for a fact that is why a couple people I know ordered ARB's instead of something like the Shortbus (which they admitted they liked better). People often choose the safe route, even if it's the far more expensive one, and even if they don't like the safe choice as much.
But like I said, there are plenty of down sides to these that would make someone else choose another combo, and there's nothing wrong with that. Weight, lack of flex (though when dual beadlocked that's a non-issue), not as aggressive as some would like, hard rubber.....those are all valid reasons not to choose it.
But there's lots of good reasons
to chose it, and cost is only one. Very tough (4 instead of only 3 or 2 sidewall plies), about the cheapest dual beadlock setup you can get, longevity, a decent all around tire, proven in
many conditions, very quiet on the road....there's more than a few good points about them.
Any tire/rim combo you choose will be a trade off. If you pick the ultimate off road tire, it ain't gonna be a good DD (too soft, too knobby, and might swell up like a balloon on the freeway).
And FWIW, TWF sells quite a few of these tires and rims. So there are a bunch of people running them, maybe just not many in your area. Even in my relatively small home town I see military 37's pop up on Craigslist fairly regularly.
