Ditch, you are correct, The Alligator is the cheapo chinese inquiry which has gone to the wind, I am much more interested in the Walmart Mud Hogs which are at 313 currently, these will be my tire when I find some rims. I might just grab them now & put em on the shelf
Build FJfordy4DR12V (purists turn your eyes away from this one)
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Ditcherman
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- #342
Ya, I’d do that in a heartbeat if I wasn’t going to drive it from Midwest corn country to anywhere fun, which is always far away. I just don’t know about reliability and wear down the interstate. If Nitto made a load range E I’d go for them but I guess D will do, that’s how concerned I am about it, wrong or right.
Here ya go
Ridge Grappler | Hybrid Terrain Light Truck Tire | Nitto Tire
The Ridge Grappler features a revolutionary dynamic hybrid tread pattern and provides a quiet and comfortable with off-road performance capabilities.www.nittotire.com
I’m looking at 17” but the Nitto site is pretty friendly to use, to show all available.
Pretty tough to find the pizza cutter type sizes in a brand that I trust and Nitto has been very good to me on my Tundra.
But man is it real money, at least to me.
The Toyo RT trail is sub $400 it’s all but the same tire as the ridge grappler.
Ditcherman
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- #344
I’ve heard of them obviously but never looked into them. They look pretty good, maybe better? 3 ply sidewalls vs 2 and a 38x11.50r17 so that’s cool.
My KO2’s are already chunked and have a bit of vibration.
Let the self-justification begin…
Those Ridge Grappler tires look cool but I don’t see them in a 40” size. I’d love to run a 37” tire in addition to my 40” Baja Boss tires but I think the gear ratio wouldn’t be great for that size difference.
I will keep the M/T for Utah, which I will use a few times a year. I also want an ice/snow A/T tire for highway and Colorado trails. The Patagonia A/T Pro and Maxxis Razr A/T look interesting but their highway snow/ice rating seems less desirable than the BFG KO3. I love my KO2s on the 4Runner but I wonder how they will hold up under my weight given Matt’s experience on his Cruiser-bus.
I will keep the M/T for Utah, which I will use a few times a year. I also want an ice/snow A/T tire for highway and Colorado trails. The Patagonia A/T Pro and Maxxis Razr A/T look interesting but their highway snow/ice rating seems less desirable than the BFG KO3. I love my KO2s on the 4Runner but I wonder how they will hold up under my weight given Matt’s experience on his Cruiser-bus.
Ditcherman
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- #346
I tore mine up in Missouri at SMOOR on some pretty serious rocks, even sliced a sidewall. I think they were fine after SAS.
@sogncab was behind watching me trying to gun it up a creek ledge, slipping back down and coming within an inch of an overhanging ledge bashing my rear corner window. Tried about three times and decided to winch before my luck ran out. Then replaced the tire on top of the creek ledge.
These 37” ko2’s are available in a load range c and d, so be careful if you order, I ended up with a mix.
I run KO3s on my Silverado Duramax long bed 4 door 4wd. I have towed an 8600 lb trailer to Kansas and back and to Massachusetts and back. Last set only lasted 75,000 miles. But this set with 20,000 miles looks brand new, so hoping they'll hold up better.
The set of KO2s on my Hj47 had about 35000 miles on them when I sold the rig and they looked great: granted, that was years ago. But those had many miles of ghost town loops, etc on them.
I also run them on my wife's Tahoe Duramax 4wd. 40,000 miles so far. Both are likely heavier than just about any Cruiser and they've held up great thus far. My wife considers a red light a challenge and thinks slowing for corners is a sign of weakness.
I tore mine up in Missouri at SMOOR on some pretty serious rocks, even sliced a sidewall. I think they were fine after SAS.
@sogncab was behind watching me trying to gun it up a creek ledge, slipping back down and coming within an inch of an overhanging ledge bashing my rear corner window. Tried about three times and decided to winch before my luck ran out. Then replaced the tire on top of the creek ledge.
These 37” ko2’s are available in a load range c and d, so be careful if you order, I ended up with a mix.
This sounds like a trail that I would run my Baja Bass tires on. I will keep an eye out for mixed load ranges but I think that the 40” KO3 size only comes in F, which seems overkill for a 6k lb vehicle.
Ditcherman
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- #349
I would have swore before I went to bed last night I found a 38x11.50 for $380 but I sure can’t find that now. 5-600.
Ditcherman
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- #350
Well ya know how the noobs always want to spin their tires…
Ditcherman
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- #351
That’s amazing mileage.
Our roads are crowned badly, every time they go put another layer of chip and seal over what was originally a crowned dirt road they overlap and it gets worse.
I’m very happy to get 40000 out of a set of ridge grapplers on a Tundra.
To be fair, other than towing, my truck only drives highway. I don't enjoy driving it because all the electronic crap on it, the automatic transmission, the sheer size, etc make it really unpleasant to drive in town. So 95% of is mileage are with the cruise dry at 75. In town I drive one of my collector cars.
Now my wife is the opposite: 95% city. I'm lucky to get 50,000 miles on her KO3s. Her Michelins which came on the rig new didn't even make 25000 miles before the edges were scrubbed clean.
To be fair, i do rotate every oil change at 5000 miles. I didn't rotate the Michelins at all because I wanted to swap in KO3s.
I adore my KO3s.
I'm assuming you're like me, and you've always got a trailer on the ball. Tires just don't last on work trucks.
I've been happy with everything I've put BFG AT's on. My last pickup had them on there, but I traded it with only about 15k miles on the tires. Which means I probably got 35k miles on the tires that came with. What I need to do when I trade in the next truck, is peel the wheels and tires off day one, throw decent tires on, then when the warranty is about up, throw the on the shiny new wheels and rubber back on.
I tore mine up in Missouri at SMOOR on some pretty serious rocks, even sliced a sidewall. I think they were fine after SAS.
@sogncab was behind watching me trying to gun it up a creek ledge, slipping back down and coming within an inch of an overhanging ledge bashing my rear corner window. Tried about three times and decided to winch before my luck ran out. Then replaced the tire on top of the creek ledge.
These 37” ko2’s are available in a load range c and d, so be careful if you order, I ended up with a mix.
You bring a school bus to a trail event...... LOL
Ditcherman
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- #355
Actually trailer very little any more. We had to move some stuff with the semi so we just migrated to moving everything on single drop or detach.
Grossing 114K.
I want to drive
Ditcherman
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Interesting little side deal today; a friend with a 40 wanted to install power steering, and chose to go the electric route. I’m letting him and another friend use my shop.
I don’t have a lot of pictures of that project yet, but what fascinated me was that this 40 is 39000 original miles. When my friend bought it it was mostly in boxes, and he and another friend brought it back to life. The body’s been painted but the frame hasn’t been touched. Apparently is was stored in a heated barn while disassembled. Pretty amazing to see.
I don’t have a lot of pictures of that project yet, but what fascinated me was that this 40 is 39000 original miles. When my friend bought it it was mostly in boxes, and he and another friend brought it back to life. The body’s been painted but the frame hasn’t been touched. Apparently is was stored in a heated barn while disassembled. Pretty amazing to see.
Ditcherman
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- #358
Had a chore that I’ve been dreading.
Ended up with too much backlash and near zero pinion preload last time it went together.
3 times ago when it was apart the person who did it didn’t keep track of the original shims so we were starting from scratch.
Had the advantage of working on it for a few hours ant an time and then leaving it to do something else but it was still no fun.
I did feel like I finally got a good pattern, but with backlash at .012 instead of the spec’d .009. So we’ll see. Don’t really know if that matters.
Ran out of the yellow stuff, didn’t have any diaper rash cream, turns out cream cheese works.
Got it wrapped up in time to get to a 5:30am call time for a video shoot that I arranged the property for.
If anyone watches the Indy 500, there should be a Memorial Day piece airing right before the race, and this should be a part of it.
Civil war drumline.
The group of drummers are actual members of the army, from the DC area I believe and those aren’t costumes, those are actual uniforms.
Ended up with too much backlash and near zero pinion preload last time it went together.
3 times ago when it was apart the person who did it didn’t keep track of the original shims so we were starting from scratch.
Had the advantage of working on it for a few hours ant an time and then leaving it to do something else but it was still no fun.
I did feel like I finally got a good pattern, but with backlash at .012 instead of the spec’d .009. So we’ll see. Don’t really know if that matters.
Ran out of the yellow stuff, didn’t have any diaper rash cream, turns out cream cheese works.
Got it wrapped up in time to get to a 5:30am call time for a video shoot that I arranged the property for.
If anyone watches the Indy 500, there should be a Memorial Day piece airing right before the race, and this should be a part of it.
Civil war drumline.
The group of drummers are actual members of the army, from the DC area I believe and those aren’t costumes, those are actual uniforms.
Ditcherman
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- #359
Another wild week, and the bumper sticker doing its job I guess. Also, I’m an idiot.
Running errands, I noticed the clutch was going to the floor, then it got harder to shift, then it got impossible to shift unless you were rolling and could float it in, so I broke the shift lever off where I had welded it. (94-98 dodges came with this weird curly que shape coming out of the tower, I cut and straightened it) Not a good weld. Like, if you saw it, you wouldn’t ride over black bear with me probably.
Anyway, towed home, and if I would have taken literally 10 seconds to check the loose linkage at the pedal it would have saved me the trouble.
But, in doing so, I ended up replacing the clutch master also, and when I took the old one off it turns out it was leaking, but I didn’t really know it because there’s a few seeps under this truck (it’s a Cummins, a few seeps is putting it nicely) and many things stay wetish. So I wouldn’t have seen it, and it may have failed me on the aforementioned black bear.
So that was worth the $45 tow bill. I guess. But I still feel like an idiot for not bothering with the “little” stuff.
Interesting enough, my clutch pedal went to the floor a few weeks ago. Rough time for clutches!