33's and wear buying in the NW
i was in the same boat. my 33's were down to 1/2 deep tread wells. so, i looked around for new ones, and found that the 35's were a good step up if i switched to 16 inch rims at this time. so, i did.
as i searched for a good used set, i found that in the urban centers, Seattle-Tacoma, Portland, there are guys that are taking off tires with less than 1000 miles on em and selling them for about $150 per tire just to change the look, or to try and get better gas milliage.
short of the story, craigslist. spend less than $600 and go get em yourself. i did about 1200 miles for 5 tires and 5 rims, spending $1237 total for tires and rims. the main set of tires had about 300 miles on em, and still had the little rubber nubs all over, they were dirty, but very new. 4 of the rims were already mounted with 4 of the tires and they were new as well. i bought the one remianing rim on sale at Schauwbeee for $87 and the one remianing tire came from a guy who just wanted to get rid of one tire, my size, my load range. TOTAL spent on gas...about $105.00. TOTAL for 5 tires and rims...$1357. that's called savings.
From start to finish, it took me 18 days to find and gather and assemble all the pieces. Maybe 6 hours at the keyboard searching craigslist. upgrade done.
one more thing, i drove through a whole bunch of small towns and lots of country side. i left my card with 13 folks, 6 of which i talked with, who might be selling their fj40. SWEET VICTORY.