Been following this thread for a while now and found this and many other threads super helpful in trying to decide on wheels and tires. A big shout out to all those who answered questions and provided their experiences. I had debated a long time about which tire size to go with and wanted to share my my thoughts for others who are reading. I ended up going with EvoCorse DakarZero 17x8 ET 40s in Matte Black and Falken Wildpeak AT3w in 285/70r17.
A few notes about this: My use case was that this is my daily driver and I will be doing a lot of driving on the highway to get to skiing, hiking, mountain biking, and to get to our cabin where we will do a lot of fire service roads, light overlanding, and camping. We also spend a lot of time on snow and ice. I won't be doing any rock crawling, at least intentionally. I wanted to go as big as possible without doing a lot of trimming, shifting liners, KDSS relo, or obligating myself to make other mods and I wanted to maintain as much of the original geometry and scrub radius while still getting a 17 inch AT wheel and tire setup that looks good. I am so glad I went with the smaller tire size, which by the way, is not that small unless maybe comparing to 35s. I do have slight rubbing on the passenger side front rearward mudflap in full lock in reverse. I don't see or notice any other rubbing and I don't hear any other rubbing except in this one scenario. I was a little surprised by this but it seems pretty minor. I could heat up the flap but I am scheduled for a BP51 lift in late May/early June so I will take care of it then.
I think the setup looks great, the feel and performance of the rig is way better, nowhere near as much of the marshmallow feel, and I can take corners at faster speed and it overall just feels more robust. That said, I do feel a few more bumps in the road due to the E rated tires but worth the trade and to be expected. Noise is minimal and I can't tell a difference compared to stock even at 80 MPH.
All in all, happy with my choice and it really does come down to what you want to do in your rig and how you want it to look. I was always thinking I needed the next size up when in reality, the rig is super capable already so I didn't feel like I needed to go any bigger. A couple before and after pics below:
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Before
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After.
By the way, I do have the caps for these wheels, just haven't put them on yet. Will do that and post photos as I know some have wondered about the caps.