Need a tire that wears better

[Scoop]

You don't need any machinery or special equipment to mount a tire on a beadlock rim. Only to break the bead on the back side. Bead breakers are relatively cheap ... or you can just run over the tire (not the wheel) with a truck or car ...

 

[Remington]

LT tires for long wear. I have 31x10.50x15 Thunderer Trac MT's on factory wheels and love them. I do a lot of road driving through town and sand, hard pack and rocks. They do great.

View attachment 386803

I thought them woods looked familiar like Michigan woods. I like St Helen trails when they aren't busy. The sand bowl is cool too

 

[Dankathy]

I don't have a tread depth gauge but they 'look' pretty close 🤔 (just now checked with a flashlight to cast a shadow). The rears are, indeed, done at 5k miles. The fronts have too much tread depth to see a difference between inside/outside.

Going by the dust on the tread, this photo shows the front is slightly tipped in and the rear is running flat, taken immediately after mounting and driving onto the trailer. The other side looks the same. Last time I checked, my ground clearance (preload) was close to factory spec (14" on 30" tires). I'd tighten your preload 'a bit' to get your wear closer to what you want, that'll be a 'guess and by golly' estimation.

fwiw: I just looked up the KM3 UTV spec'd tire online and it's rated for 50 or 65 lbs. tire pressure. That's not much of a UTV rating IMO and they're $43 more per tire. My hope for a better ride from the tires is diminishing but I sure like the high mileage. Do you have a tire machine to break the beads? That would be a nice addition for me but Discount Tire will do it with a tire purchase; they won't mount beadlocks though.
View attachment 386960

Yours look good in that picture, i have always believed something is just a smidgen off with my machine. Ride heighth is 14 1/2. My local tire guy (big o tires) will do the inner beads for free, my dragon allocates me one beer per beadlock so no problems with doing them. My biggest concern is wearing the threads in the aluminum wheels, even with anti-seize. I almost always use four wheel drive - i learned at a young age that spinning tires (or tracks) costs money, that lesson stuck. When my rears were at about 10k the fronts went about 2k longer, but no full lock slides and easy throttle here.

 

[CID]

Yours look good in that picture, i have always believed something is just a smidgen off with my machine. Ride height is 14 1/2. My local tire guy (big o tires) will do the inner beads for free, my dragon allocates me one beer per beadlock so no problems with doing them. My biggest concern is wearing the threads in the aluminum wheels, even with anti-seize. I almost always use four wheel drive - i learned at a young age that spinning tires (or tracks) costs money, that lesson stuck. When my rears were at about 10k the fronts went about 2k longer, but no full lock slides and easy throttle here.

I'm in 4wd anytime it's not flat and have accepted the higher rear wear as the 'solid' rear axle. I'm surprised yours were that evenly matched front to rear. I don't mind mounting tires on BL's but I don't have a dragon metering my brews either. LOL I'm a fairly gentle driver too, usually. 😊 I've really missed my 'up' paddle since I broke the switch, another project before I leave.

I'm also leery of the beadlock bolts into the alum wheel. I was checking tire pressures this afternoon and noticed that I had lost a beadlock bolt (also anti-seized). I was immediately embarrassed by my lack of maintenance allowing that to happen. But when I went around tightening all of them, I broke one, with only one bolt between them. Sticking something sharp and pokey into the other hole, and sure enough, the bolt hadn't vibrated out, it broke off. I think those are grade 8 bolts and I never cranked them down really tight, I'd rather tighten them occasionally than strip the threads.

I'm headed for a short trip to Hanksville as soon as my wheel bearings get here (trying to beat the summer heat), so trying to get the broken bolts out will have to wait. I wish they were further apart on the wheel, not just one bolt between the two. :-| I'm definitely not looking forward to that project.

 

[Smitty335]

I'm in 4wd anytime it's not flat and have accepted the higher rear wear as the 'solid' rear axle. I'm surprised yours were that evenly matched front to rear. I don't mind mounting tires on BL's but I don't have a dragon metering my brews either. LOL I'm a fairly gentle driver too, usually. 😊 I've really missed my 'up' paddle since I broke the switch, another project before I leave.

I'm also leery of the beadlock bolts into the alum wheel. I was checking tire pressures this afternoon and noticed that I had lost a beadlock bolt (also anti-seized). I was immediately embarrassed by my lack of maintenance allowing that to happen. But when I went around tightening all of them, I broke one, with only one bolt between them. Sticking something sharp and pokey into the other hole, and sure enough, the bolt hadn't vibrated out, it broke off. I think those are grade 8 bolts and I never cranked them down really tight, I'd rather tighten them occasionally than strip the threads.

I'm headed for a short trip to Hanksville as soon as my wheel bearings get here (trying to beat the summer heat), so trying to get the broken bolts out will have to wait. I wish they were further apart on the wheel, not just one bolt between the two. :-| I'm definitely not looking forward to that project.

Sure you used anti seize and not thread locker bolts? I just got new tires mounted on bead locks, no issues. The bead locks hadn't been broken down in 3 years?

 

[CID]

Sure you used anti seize and not thread locker bolts? I just got new tires mounted on bead locks, no issues. The bead locks hadn't been broken down in 3 years?

Yep, positive and it's only been a year and a half since I mounted the tires (December 2021). That's a pretty low stress application, I'm surprised that two of them broke, one on its own and one when I was tightening the others. I'm not a gorilla and very rarely break a bolt, especially into aluminum (never use a torque wrench either).

 

[Dankathy]

I use a torque wrench, have never broke a bolt with the walmart specials. Back up to my previous machine, i was running 32in bfg km3 utv tires. Had just been through the learning curve of the thin bead rings on the terrabites and was very happy that the bfgs were much thicker - they were so thick the beadlock rings "coned" when tightened, puts the bolt heads in a bind because they're not parallel to the beadlock ring, pops the heads off. Broken stubs were never tight, 3/16 left twist bit pulled them right out. Could be similar to what you've got?

 

[Dankathy]

Found it.

Just a quick update, the bfg's have been mounted for a week with zero pressure loss. The terrabites measured 7/16" at the bead, the bfg's measured 11/16". 1/4" is quite a lot of difference. I understand that a lot of people run the terrabites with good luck, but it seems to me that all terrabites may not be created equally. Maybe i just got a bad set.

Bead clamp width on System 3 and STI wheels is 10 mm. You should shoot for a 25% crush but at least 20% to avoid leaks. That means the bead needs to be at least 12 mm and preferably 13 to 14 mm. 7/16 = 11 mm so that is why the Terrabites are hard to seal.

The variation in the bead thickness makes some of them leak and some not. I had one that only lost 1 psi a week but another that lost 1-2 psi a day and the other 2 somewhere in the middle but I never measured all of mine to see if there was a difference.

11/16 = 17+ mm so you will experience bead ring "coning" if you are not careful. DO NOT over torque the ring bolts and you will need to constantly re-torque your rings because they are not bottomed out and the rubber will compress over time. This was from paulf

 

[russknight]

I don't know if these are any good but they're cheap. Forceum M/T 08 Plus LT 235/75R15 104/101Q C (6 Ply) MT Mud Terrain Tire

Had the blackwaters on my gator. Never a flat and good mud tires.

I ran those for a while. Great tires!

 

[russknight]

I'm currently running N78-15 Buckshot Mudders.