All terrain or mud tires which is right for you?
For those exploring off the pavement its commonly argued that upgrading the stock tires on your rig should be one of the first things to do after driving your new Toyota off the showroom floor. Those tires are made for the masses, the majority of buyers spend all or most of their time on pavement. However the reason you have found KRave and are reading this blog is driven by your desire to seek unpaved roads. You are not the average Toyota driver and you seek better traction when you get off the pavement and you get bored looking at those stock HT(hi way tread) tires. You seek a tire that gets you to remote destinations safer and like most people a tire that looks good as well.
A very common debate when building your Toyota is tire tread pattern. We commonly get asked what tire should I buy? I wish there was one magic tire I could suggest for you, the truth is the right tire for you may not be the right tire for me. For example Ryans favourite is a MT(mud terrain) and mine is an AT(all terrain ) tire. However I can tell you we both appreciate and use both styles of tires. I wanted to share this blog with you to help in your next tire purchase. We try our best to use multiple tires to be better consultants for you when building your rig.
If you are a function driven buyer a great start is to calculate how often your rig will be transporting yourself on payment and off payment. It may sound a little obvious but if you spend over 50% of your time off road I would entertain a MT tire and if your off road time is less than 50% I would entertain an AT tire.
Below is a summary of the pros of each tire tread style I have run;
AT Pros
-On road performance, for our daily driver rigs these are way more enjoyable
-I have experienced 10-15% better fuel economy than my MT’s
-I have sold some MT’s because they were too loud, AT’s generally quieter on pavement
-Can be found as a P(passenger 4 ply) LT(light truck 6, 8, 10, 12 ply) See other blogs for more detailed info on this!
-Roll smother on pavement, some MT’s give a lot more tire feedback. Can be argued they balance better than MT’s.
-Lower maintenance that MT’s, you can get away with less tire rotations before bad tire cupping happens.
-Can be better for hard packed snow as they have more sipes in the tread
MT Pros
-Traction, wow my mind is blown each time I take my MT’s off the pavement!
-I have sold some AT’s because they were not sexy enough to look at, hard to find a MT that doesn’t look great! Show trucks at SEMA and my kids toy trucks all have MT tires on them!
-Can give you amazing deep soft snow traction
-If your competitive with your friends and don’t like to be the guy being winched out, MT tires have made my truck do cool things even in 2 wheel drive!
-Evacuate dirt and debris better than AT’s
-Can last longer or be more durable on sharp rocks/gravel, largely due to less siping or tire edges to get chipped/chunked.
