There are seemingly endless discussions about what the "best" tires are, or which are better in any number of ways, so I figured why not muddy the water even further.
I bought my '05 Cruiser last year from an old buddy of mine. It came with 275/70/18 GY Duratracs on it, which by his guess had about 25-30k of mixed use on them. He commuted on them, but also had some fun trips to Moab, Zion, out west, as well as Big Bend etc (yes, I know, my Cruiser is more well traveled than me). He noted that they had gotten much noisier over time, and were vibrating at an annoying frequency as well. Anyway, he offered to put new tires on it before he sold it to me (at my cost, of course) but because he just bought them in 2015, and because I thought I'd get some more use out of them and then buy new ones going into winter I told him to hold off.
Fast forward to this year and every time I drove it, the vibrations seemed to get worse, I Road Force balanced them, tried all different pressures, cross rotated them but no dice. I chalked it up to my buddy going a little too long between rotations and them developing a "chop" wear pattern, which apparently is a serious problem on these tires. Anyway, It got to the point that at 60-70mph (indicated) the whole cruiser was shaking so much (wheel, seat, everything) that I was legitimately afraid that I would vibrate something important loose, so I said screw it and committed to buying new tires. It wasn't until recently that I actually examined the tires more closely.
On at least one of the tires the tread appeared to actually be separating from the sidewall Dropbox - tire sidewall.jpg
Whether it was a new problem, or I hadn't noticed it when I was airing up and down etc I don't know.
Thankfully nothing catastrophic happened. But as much as I love the concept of a siped A/T M/T hybrid, liked their looks and was pleased with the snow performance of them it's pretty hard to recommend these to other people.
For what it's worth, my Cruiser rides awesome on the KO2's that I ended up with, and is back to being an absolute pleasure to drive.
I bought my '05 Cruiser last year from an old buddy of mine. It came with 275/70/18 GY Duratracs on it, which by his guess had about 25-30k of mixed use on them. He commuted on them, but also had some fun trips to Moab, Zion, out west, as well as Big Bend etc (yes, I know, my Cruiser is more well traveled than me). He noted that they had gotten much noisier over time, and were vibrating at an annoying frequency as well. Anyway, he offered to put new tires on it before he sold it to me (at my cost, of course) but because he just bought them in 2015, and because I thought I'd get some more use out of them and then buy new ones going into winter I told him to hold off.
Fast forward to this year and every time I drove it, the vibrations seemed to get worse, I Road Force balanced them, tried all different pressures, cross rotated them but no dice. I chalked it up to my buddy going a little too long between rotations and them developing a "chop" wear pattern, which apparently is a serious problem on these tires. Anyway, It got to the point that at 60-70mph (indicated) the whole cruiser was shaking so much (wheel, seat, everything) that I was legitimately afraid that I would vibrate something important loose, so I said screw it and committed to buying new tires. It wasn't until recently that I actually examined the tires more closely.
On at least one of the tires the tread appeared to actually be separating from the sidewall Dropbox - tire sidewall.jpg
Whether it was a new problem, or I hadn't noticed it when I was airing up and down etc I don't know.
Thankfully nothing catastrophic happened. But as much as I love the concept of a siped A/T M/T hybrid, liked their looks and was pleased with the snow performance of them it's pretty hard to recommend these to other people.
For what it's worth, my Cruiser rides awesome on the KO2's that I ended up with, and is back to being an absolute pleasure to drive.
