BF Goodrich AT tires review

BF Goodrich AT tires review

I just installed my forth set of BF Goodrich All Terrain radials on my Jeep Cherokee. I have tried a few other tires over the years but I keep going back to the BGF AT tire.

The tread life has been excellent. The traction in rain, mud and gravel has been excellent. Puncture resistance has been excellent as well. I have only lost one tire due to a sidewall puncture and that one took a lot of abuse before it leaked.

I like the smooth quiet ride. Of the four I just mounted, only one need a small amount of lead to balance it. The other three were fine. That shows me the quality of the rubber casting is top notch.

In the past I have been disappointed with the traction on snow and ice although I never got stranded. They just did not perform as well as real snow tires in the same situations. I have read that the latest version that I just mounted has better snow and ice traction so I look forward to trying them out.

The BFGs have a very aggressive side lug for an AT. That really helps them in mud and gravel. In fact the edges remind me of Rally Racing tires. The square edges give excellent traction in dirt and gravel.

These tires also respond well to being aired down off road. Will lower pressure, they wrap around rocks and get traction like a true off road tire. The carcass has strong sidewalls that handle a lot of abuse. I have only had one sidewall failure and that was when I was forcing one into a sharp rock trying to overcome a driveline failure.

When aired up to street pressure, these tires handle like sports car tires. I have been amazed at how well they grip on off ramps and other cornering situations. The tread is very stable and does not squirm as much as Mud Terrain tires or other All Terrain tires. I find the lack of tread squirm comparable to most all weather street tires.

The BGF AT tires give a nice aggressive look to my daily driver Jeep. They look great wrapped around my Grizzly wheels. The traction gives me the confidence to hit a trail or muddy back road at any time. I can air them down and tackle some of the tougher climbs if need be. I save the really rough stuff for my dedicated off road Jeep, but I really like having the added traction that the all terrain tires give me for the occasional off road use this Jeep sees. But my light off roading might be considered extreme by some people who haven’t seen where my off road Jeep goes.

Overall, I really like the BFG AT tire and will continue using it on my street driven Jeep. They work well in every situation I am likely to encounter.


BFGoodrich All-Terrain T/A KO Tire

Dick Cepek Crusher Tires on Jenny’s XJ Jeep Cherokee

Dick Cepek Crusher Tires on Jenny’s XJ Jeep Cherokee

In order to get a bit more off road capabilities, Jenny decided to go up a couple of tires sizes. She ordered a set of Dick Cepek Crusher tires from Tire Rack after reading many reviews and considering factors such as shipping time and customer service. To read more about her decision making process see her blog post at: http://thejeeptalks.blogspot.com/2010/11/dick-cepek-crusher-tires.html

The Dick Cepek tires have a very interesting tread pattern in a dog bone shape. The side lugs are in the shape of a skull and cross bones. The tread has a huge void area that makes for good traction in mud and rocks and self cleans quickly. The lugs are also siped for improved wet traction on pavement.

The tires arrived quickly from Tire Rack and were delivered by my friendly UPS driver who was kind enough to off load the very heavy tires in front of the shop door.

Mounting them on the rims with my manual tire changer proved to be a challenge due to the heavy sidewall construction. It was difficult to compress the tire enough to get it to slide into the drop groove on the rim. In fact, we got only three mounted before the concrete anchors that held the machine to the floor failed. I had a local tire shop do the last one and I noticed even his fancy pneumatic tire machine had a little trouble pushing on the last part of the bead.

While I was mounting the tires, Jenny worked on opening up her fender wells to accommodate all that rubber. The stock flares were removed and the flange was folded under to make a smooth surface in case the tires did contact the body work.

In the front, the bump stops were also extended an inch and a half with spacers mounted to the bottoms of the coil spring perches. The tires looked great mounted on her black Cragar steel wheels.

On the road the tires are surprisingly quiet. The road feel is fantastic and they are very smooth running. The tires required very small weights to balance which surprised me considering the total amount of rubber on them.

On the trail, they showed their value right away. She first aired them down to 15 psi. They did a fantastic job of getting her up the very muddy class III and IV trails in Harlan, Ky. The sidewalls still looked very stiff over rocks however so on day two she dropped the pressure more to 11 psi. I was pretty sure that as stiff as the sidewalls were there was little danger of them popping off the rim.

In the infamous Lower Rock Garden the tires did a fantastic job of gripping the rocks. The skull shaped side lugs that I had thought were mostly for show gripped rocks like glue. At one point the only thing holding her to a rock was the side lug and as she drove forward the tire went up the rock instead of slipping off. And this was in wet snowy conditions.

She was very happy to make her first successful run through the Lower Rock Garden. The new tires worked great.

Also on one very muddy climb where the only trucks that had made it up ahead of her were running Swampers, she made a quick mud slinging run and made it all the way to the top in one pass. The deep bone shaped lugs dug in and cleared out just as they were needed to make it up the twisty climb. I think she embarrassed some of the guys running BFG’s in that she made it look easy to climb the hill.

As we were leaving on Sunday, she aired them back up to 30 psi for the trip home. Even at interstate speeds, the tires ran smooth and quiet. The Dick Cepek Crusher tires proved to be very tough and versatile. They handled everything she threw at them: rocks, mud gravel and pavement with equal ability. Hopefully the tread life will be as great as the traction and she can enjoy them for a long time to come.

Dick Cepek Crusher Tire

Dick Cepek Crusher Tire

Dick Cepek Crusher Tire priced from $167.






Smoking Tires

This past weekend at 100AW I got to spend a little time with Ken Block. Ken won the 100 Acre Wood rally in his Subaru. Here is a cool video of him doing some fun drifting. I love the way he lives his dreams!

Kumho Ecsta SPT Colored Smoke Tire

Kumho Ecsta SPT Colored Smoke Tire

Kumho Ecsta SPT Colored Smoke Tire priced from $127.