I've HAD it.....help me decide on new tires....

Here's the scoop - I have 32" Yokohama Geolander A/T's on all 3 of my trucks. These tires are fantastic - exception is mud, on 2 of the trucks.

With the Rodeo, they provide excellent dry/wet traction/cornering, etc - but, for the life of me, these damn tires will NOT stay balanced on this truck.

They do great for 3-4k, then have to be rotated and rebalanced, but they are not 100% smooth at 70mph irregardless. And, for the first 500 miles or so after they are rotated, it's like they have to wear into a new pattern or something.

This is the 2nd set of Yok's on this truck, and they currently have 20k or so, look to be wearing about as evenly as one can get. The first set, some of you may remember, 3 of them blew after running over roofing nails dumped out the back of a p/up. Discount Tire would only replace them with the same type of tire - however, even the 1st set was never completely smooth.

My solution at this time: these Yok's still have 70% tread remaining; considering my diesel will be in need of new tires before winter, and these Yok's perform marvelously on that diesel, you can guess where they're going. As honestly, I have a hard time believing that 2 separate sets of Yok's could be completely bad - sometimes I wonder if it isn't the delicacy, if you will, of the Rodeo's front end in particular.

Which leaves the question of what to put on the Rodeo - personally, I've never been completely fond of the lack of traction from the Yok's versus what I had with the Bridgestone Revo's on this 4x2 Rodeo. However, I can not afford a new set of Revo's, they have overblown their price way too much.

What I need from a set of tires is 85% performance in allowing a 4x2 truck to remain comfortably living in 4x4 turf - truck itself is good at providing half of that 85%.

I need tires that will provide excellent traction in snow, moderate off-road terrain, rain, cornering, and have respectable on-road manners as well in terms of not being gas guzzlers, sloppy performers. I don't do much driving in mud, at least not on purpose.

Tires I'm looking at so far, General Grabber AT2, Firestone Destination A/T & M/T's (although they ARE expensive too)

I love the 265/75 R16 size, but, probably should return to a 265/70 R16 with stock 4.30 gears and an automatic - but what do you all think??

Most of all, I want tires that are easy to balance, I've had MORE then my fair share of tire brands that are hard to balance!!!

FWIW - Goodyear/BFG/Michelin are somewhat out of my price range; and I've had my experiences with Goodyear/BFG which were both far worse for balancing issues.

Also, I have visited several Discounts had them use their bigger/better balancing machine, front-end alignment completed, new shocks 2yrs ago, truck drives straight and has never eaten through tires.

Hankook Dynapro MT RT03

:) There are Kumho tires on my Rodeo and both Dodges, The Rodeo rides great and they havent been balanced since they were put on but that only about 20k. The ones on the Dodges have much more, but they dont needs balancing and are wearing very good. The one with the 4 back wheels has about 45k on those tires and they still look like they will last a long time. It mainly used to haul hay, and cows back and forth forom the sells so its highway miles. Andie:)

I just put Firestone Destination AT's on my wife's Explorer (got them from Tirerack.com) and they seem great so far. Nice, fairly quiet dry road performance . . . especially given that the tread design is pretty deep and aggressive. Bought them because they had a great rating on the website and a few friends also recommended them. They were $94 each not including shipping for the Explorer, but I looked the other day and they were a little cheaper for the size I would need for the 98 Passport I drive.

I bought my Passport used . . . it had Bridgestone Dueler ATs. They were ok but were past their prime when I bought the truck. When those wore out I replaced them with Yokohama Geolander HT/S--also from Tirerack.com. I like the Geolanders overall, but they are pretty average in snow to be honest. If I need new tires soon I will try the Destinations on the Rodeo as well.

Well, instead of paying $900 or so for a new set of rubber.

Rodeo has entered a new set of ball joints, front-end alignment, AND, because these two maintenance items made the Rodeo feel like it was WAY too easy to oversteer; I had really begun to feel like new tires were needed.

After the ball joint replacement, this truck became kind of freaky to drive at speeds above 50mph because it was too easy to steer, took the Rodeo back to Discount again.

Talked to a guy that asked what ply of tire I was running; told him 8-ply's. He said the BIGGEST problem people don't realize, is irregardless the size/weight of the vehicle, if you're running a 6-ply, 8-ply, etc the amount of pressure needs to correlate with the overall build of the TIRE, not based off the weight of the vehicle.

So, my only running the Rodeo at 38psi rear/40 front is what's causing my own complaints as the 8-ply tire's are not given enough pressure to hold them down and hold their conformaty to the road.

Problem was IMMEDIATELY resolved the minute they put 50lbs of pressure in all 4 tires; truck is NAILED to the road like superglue.

I would've never guessed this has been my problem, but when I explained to the guy that the front of the Rodeo feels squirly, it was a sign to him that there wasn't enough air for the TIRE itself.

Point is, if you're running a 6-ply tire, you should put NOTHING less then 40lbs of pressure, if you're running an 8-ply, 50lbs should be your minimum.

A 10-ply tire has no place on a Rodeo.

Need to go bump the psi up on the Toyota's now too.

let me know what you want for the old ones I live pretty close
j