Road Tyre vs A/T Tyre Off Road

Red XS said:
I imagine the RE002 would have a thicker sidewall then most road tyres as it is a performance tyre designed for handling, not a passenger tyre designed for comfort.

When I chose my current HT tyres I wanted something with a thinner sidewall to bag out better on the sand. All about having the right tyre for your personal application.
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Agreed. Sidewall thickness no doubt varies from tyre to tyre be it road tyres or off road tyre.
 
Rally said:
There are 2 points to consider. Traction and puncture resistance. None of the mods I have made affect puncture resistance. I have had no punctures. And the mods I have made offer a far greater traction advantage off road than an a/t tyre has over a road tyre. As such, I have more grip on road and more traction off road. Win win, with no drawbacks. Galileo shunned the establishment but eventually was proved right. Thankfully if I behave myself god (aka Kevin) won’t condemn me to house arrest or ex communication ������
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Lol, this is funny. The problem is that science ain't on your side here! You are the unscientific one. You have to prove that all engineers working on tires have been a part of a gigantic hoax.

Sure, locking differentials will make a world of difference whereas just AT tires, especially mild ones, will not make nearly as big of a difference, nobody is disputing this point of yours.

The point is:
1/ Street tires are engineered for pavement and among other things, have too shallow a thread to have good off-pavement traction. Yours may be better than most street tires, so what?
2/ LT-metric AT tires are much stronger and less likely to have sidewall issues, especially when aired down.
3/ Nobody in their right mind will experiment with sets and sets of street tires until they strike gold as you claim to have. Or write a PM to Rally to be told to buy such and such tires from that particular guy somewhere in Australia.

You gotta know that for every Galileo/Einstein there a million...non-Einsteins...claiming to have discovered the Next Great Thing. :iconwink: Just because you have found happiness for yourself does not mean that you have found a recipe for the world:iconwink:

Excommunication would serve you well:ebiggrin: It will help you reflect upon your error and understand the need to re-join the community of those who know better:poke:
 
my BFG TA KO2 is best thing that i bought and put on my subaru. it changed car completely on all conditions on all seasons. and i have all 4 seasons .

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those tires best for everything. you dont need to change them ever. i use them all seasons 24/7 and when i will buy new it will be BFG TA again .
they are as hard as most mud tires but silent as normal tires. when they get more used they got little more noisy. but never too much. i never got stuck with them in anytin. they fly on sand, they go through snow, they dig in mud,they good on wet roads. thats real ALL Terrain tire.
 
"The bloke who had the SG with the latest ATS 15 Geolanders reckons they are so unimpressive on road, he is getting dedicated road tyres/rims and will only use the A/T's when off roading. I can understand why".

Interesting discussion. This particular point is clearly just one person's opinion so here is another one. I have the same tyres and can't speak highly enough of them. How can they be "so unimpressive on road?" Maybe he got a bad batch and I got a good one. In my experience they have lived up to their marketing claims, and most reviews tend to put them at or near the top re on-road performance even if this is just for all terrain tyres. They handle well in the wet and dry and I haven't noticed any more tyre noise than the stock tyres. One day I will measure the sound to see what difference if any there is.
 
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When I ran the ats a few years ago, I found noise not to be the issue. They are unimpressive on road because they lack the sidewall strength for cornering. So they flop under load. As for being scientific, I checked the thickness of the sidewalls of the road tyre and the all terrain tyre. While not overall conclusive, it is the only measuring which has been done it would seem by anyone who has contributed to this thread. All other claims are viewpoints. I measured more than one all terrain tyre, and found differences there as well. So I am not just speaking without at least something besides decades of experience of travelling over various conditions. I am more than happy to show photos and videos of my car in mud, on road tyres not getting stuck. If you wish to see them, pm me your email address and when I return home on the weekend I will send them.

I know when I did Bendethra, I had friends coming up to me saying I was going to have real problems negotiating the muddy river bank. Especially towing a camper trailer. There was a big crowd on the river bank watching a number of cars fail to get out without numerous attempts. All had off road tyres, except me. If the road tyre is so inferior to the all terrains, explain how I got out first go. Explain how on another trip, in inches deep mud where I was scrapping my sump guard, towing a trailer, I got through and that was above 100 metres in length. Like I said before, I do trip after trip after trip. I don’t get stuck where others around me do, and I don’t get punctures. If road tyres are so unsuited for off road use, then I would have found this out years ago.
 
Because you have a vehicle that combines low weight and a low center of gravity with DCCD, locking rear, and a front LSD? Plus an expert driver? How is your vehicle or yourself a representative of average?

We have said that many times, in different threads. Seen pics, and so on.
 
There seems to be people arguing past each other on this thread.. no matter.

One thing I struggle with is trying to find data on # sidewall ply's of various tyres.

Do any manufacturers publish these? It may help with portions of this discussion.

LT tyres have load ratings which reflect old ply ratings, but I understand these are no longer correlated and many fewer ply's are used these days.
 
duncanm said:
Do any manufacturers publish these? It may help with portions of this discussion.
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Bridgestone do on their 697 - its two ply, which doesn't sound particularly reassuring. Still, they were cheap.
Particular size is 215x65R16C dunno what the C means, but they also have "Light Truck" stamped on them I think their a 106 load rating.
 
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how many ply's doesn't tell all story about tire. how strong ply and what material it is from is more important. there are real life tests on most famous AT tires , ones are better for highways others for offroad, and some good enough for everything.
weakest parts of AT tires are sidewalls.
then there is real life test. what tires are mostly used on overlander's cars.
 
scalman said:
how many ply's doesn't tell all story about tire. how strong ply and what material it is from is more important. there are real life tests on most famous AT tires , ones are better for highways others for offroad, and some good enough for everything.
weakest parts of AT tires are sidewalls.
then there is real life test. what tires are mostly used on overlander's cars.
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I'm talking sidewall plys.

Knowing number of and type (cloth, aramid, steel) will most definitely tell us how resistant it is to sidewall puncture.
 
Rally said:
As for being scientific, I checked the thickness of the sidewalls of the road tyre and the all terrain tyre. While not overall conclusive, it is the only measuring which has been done it would seem by anyone who has contributed to this thread. All other claims are viewpoints.
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What were the measurements for which tyres?

Scientific measurements please, "this feels thicker" is not scientific lol

duncanm said:
If I dare speak for Rally... he neatly summarises his point himself:

Yes, ultimately an all terrain tyre will hold a marginal advantage in off road traction, but nothing like the advantage the road tyre has over the A/T tyre on road.
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This does summarise Rally's view well, that an AT is only slightly better than a road tyre with a shallow tread. This is obviously far from true, as a shallow tread clogs up almost instantly.
An AT with deeper tread and more aggressive tread pattern obviously has SUBSTANTIALLY more grip offroad in any wet or slippery conditions, plus grips on rocky tracks better too. Better grip on gravel also.

Maybe rally drivers are doing it wrong, they should ditch their rally tyres & use road road tyres ;)
 
Just go to the manufacturer's website. They will tell you something relevant. For P-metric tires, there is likely nothing to tell because they will be 2 ply. For LT AT tires, you will see arguments about strength made in different ways. Some have 3 plies, others argue that they have a modern whatever construction that means their 2 plies are just as strong as former 3 plies, others again argue that theirs have 2 plies that act like 4, and so on.

The sidewall of a tire in the US must have the ply information. So, seeing a good picture is a good way to go here.

Personally, I use as DD the mild COnti Terrain Contact AT which are great on road but I doubt they are any stronger than street tires off-road: they are too good on road to be all that good off road. What they do give me is what I expected from them: dirt performance plus no tiny stones to clean plus no chipping. So I am very happy with them but I do have my KO2 for 4x4 trails.

I don't think you will find steel in a sidewall! But you might find kevlar. What is really telling about strength, too, is the size of the shoulder guard. So, some great AT tires like Toyo Open Country AT II come in three different sub-versions, depending on the intended audience. The LT versions come with heavy duty shoulder guards but the least strong, P-metric version I had on the B9 Tribeca only had mild guards. OTOH, KO2 load rating C only come with 2 ply sidewall though they are visually identical to my D-rated 3 ply sidewall KO2s.

This is where professional reviews of current tire models tested one after the other and the combined experiences of offroaders are helpful. But any LT AT tire should be stronger than any P-metric street tire.

At the end, weight may be your best quick guide to strength. Consider this:

My stock COnti: 24 lb
My AT Conti: 27 lb
My former Geolander ATS: 31 lb
My KO2 39.5 lb

All LT tires should have more rubber and stronger bead bundles than an equivalent P-metric tire.
 
NachaLuva said:
What were the measurements for which tyres?

Scientific measurements please, "this feels thicker" is not scientific lol



This does summarise Rally's view well, that an AT is only slightly better than a road tyre with a shallow tread. This is obviously far from true, as a shallow tread clogs up almost instantly.
An AT with deeper tread and more aggressive tread pattern obviously has SUBSTANTIALLY more grip offroad in any wet or slippery conditions, plus grips on rocky tracks better too. Better grip on gravel also.

Maybe rally drivers are doing it wrong, they should ditch their rally tyres & use road road tyres ;)
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Exactly what I get from my Conti AT, plus no chipping and no clogging with tiny stones.
 
Good to see some numbers finally, although we don’t know where that weight is. Is it thicker tread, stronger sidewalls or both? Distribution will vary. The difference between at tyres is interesting especially if none of them are LT construction. Just as MAS argued who would know which street tyre to get, this information proves the same is true of at tyres. It was argued earlier that a single tyre no longer can be used for all needs, even though by it’s very name that is exactly what an at tyre attempts to do, and what I also have argued with road tyres. Yet even with a/t tyres, it could be argued some tyres are aimed more at one condition than the other.

As such, getting one particular type of AT tyre and using it in a different environment could have adverse affects. What helps in sand works against you on rock. My argument has been that where I take my road tyres, which excludes sand and snow/ice, it does work. When people ask here and elsewhere about what AT tyre to get, i don’t see questions been asked about usage. Just replies about how people love or hate the tyres they have and have had, with little to no reference to usage. Certainly nothing which is consistent and no comments saying the other person is wrong.

There needs to be more emphasis on the fact that AT tyres differ between brands and models and that road tyres can perform almost as well in many (I would argue most) circumstances depending on the tyres and where the particular AT tyres usage is more strongly targeted.
 
Sure, there is a different optimal tire for different people. Or car. No disagreement here. And no one is arguing that your choice is bad for you.

Re: your comment about how one can know.

All AT tires will perform on varied terrain. Which is best or strongest? Here you get into pro reviews and user reviews. But nobody reviews street tires for off road professionally and almost no users do either. So apples and oranges when it comes to how a user can tell what to get.

But, yes, there is bound to be a learning curve regardless.

I started going offroad in 2010 and have done so on 3 Subarus, 5 sets of AT tires and 4 sets of street tires. Only now am I fully satisfied with my choices. You are right that experience is essential for one's personal optimum.

Now, when it comes to weight: LT tires have more rubber everywhere, the plies are stronger. It is all because they must be capable of surviving overload xonditions that vehicles with P metric tires are not expexted to experience. Or so the explanation goes. I am no expert.

As for specific conditions, all offroad publications here would only consider LT ATs and MTs, no P metrics. There is a general agreement that only MT do well in mud with AT practically as bad as street. And that AT is better on dirt sand and road. There is disagreement in between. Generally, MT for big rocks and chunky rough varied terrain like canyon bottoms. Canyons is where I wear KO2s which are the strongest I can do. That debate is really a big one. To me it is tangential since there is no MT I fit anyway.
 
Writing on the phone, sorry for typos and punctuation.
 
Interesting article - I note that it's 13 years old. His tyre reports are interesting as well.
 
i was reading all icaould found and watched videos about AT tires , watched what overlanders drive with . not offroaders because AT is not mostly for hardcore stuff. but i think in the end BFG TA KO2 is baddest of them all. as strong as Mud tire. sidewalls almost indesctructible in right presure.
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wildpeak are very good AT tires . very good ans silent. very good on wet . just very good. but sidewalls would just brake split rippoff if you would made hard contact with something. so if you not driving on branches , stones, old roots or similar maybe you no need strong sidewall. but you never know . thats why now i know what i got.
 
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