I don't know if you have read my page on road force balancing or not, but I would not buy tires mail order.

I always buy my tires from the shop that will do the road force balancing. That way if one or more tires have excessive road force, they can exchange it with their supplier and get a better one.

My first batch had road force ratings of 4, 7, 10 and 32. They rejected the 32 and got me another one that ended up being 9. Can you belive that a 33" off road MT tire had a road force as low as 4??? This is unheard of. This has given me the very smooth ride on the road that I have been looking for a very long time. Later I bought a 5th tire and that had a road force of 12. In my experience on the 4Runner anything over 15 and it will make the truck shake on the road.

Now if you buy the tires mail order and one comes up with excessive road force then you have a mess on your hands trying to get it exchanged. You can always use the good mail order price as a tool to negotiate a good price from your local shop, but do expect to pay a little more.

Gadget

 

I just updated my site with some comments on the Cooper STT. I really dig these tires.



So far, all reports I have read on snow performance are very positive.

 

Thanks Gadget and Baja.
I am sold on these tires.

Will probably get them around the 1st week of December.

 

Ditto guys! Greatly appreciate all the feedback from the others as well!

 

I've only had them for about 1k miles, mostly on road with a few gravel roads and dirt forest service roads. I am happy with the performance so far, but no rain, mud or snow experience so far. The day I got them, I was at a strip mall and saw a set on a FJC, they looked sweet! Haven't really seen any on the road otherwise.

They have 3 ply sidewalls and beefy tread, look great, and are quieter than a set of previous GY MT/Rs that I had. They also balanced better than the GY MT/Rs or my last set of generic les schwab road tires (that could just be the tech did a better job balancing).

A few pics of my 285/75/16 Cooper Discoverer STTs:

 

Very nice rig Ben, the tires look great.

Here they are on a black FJ Crusier

 

Quick OT question: How can I get my linked pics to show up as pics instead of links?

 

Well... after months of debate, I finally decided to go with the LT265/75R16 Cooper S/T's (6 ply) as opposed to the STT's:


The local tire shop had STT's on display (and, man, they look REALLY good), but more tire than I really need. Plus they were nearly $50 more per, and significant snows are common around here, so I felt the S/T's were the better choice for my environment. Tire noise isn't bad either...

 

I am getting MasterCraft MT's tomorrow, supposedly they are the same as the older SST's.

 

So far I have 11,000 miles on them. They are wearing evenly. I have rotated them once so far. The sidewalls and treads have held up really well considering the abuse I have subjected them to. No major chunking or loss of lugs. I just checked and am surprised to find out that with 11,000 miles, the current tread depth is at 12/32" (67% of usable). At this rate, the tires will wear out before I get 20,000 miles on them. And considering that I usually replace tires at 50%, they may only see a few more thousand miles on my truck. Granted, the percentage of miles in the dirt and in 4wd for my truck is very high (no daily commutes and lots of overland trips) but that is pretty dissapointing and will make this a very expensive set of tires.

So my opinion as of today - is that they are awesome tires if you can afford the short lifespan :-)

 

Baja, can you compare your Cooper STTs to my Dick Cepeks?
The tires I recently bought are made by Cooper for Cepek, and the dealr told me they are STT clones.

So far I really like them, and they handle great on the highway despite the big tread.

These pics are big, 3.1 MB each, so that should give you good detail to compare to your STTs.

http://www.pnw4runners.com/fourtreks/DSC09863.JPG

http://www.pnw4runners.com/fourtreks/DSC09865.JPG

I hope to get some good life out of them, but I was spoiled by the Les Schwab Wild Country TXRs I ran for years on the 4Runner.
They still looked new almost, even after being on the rig for around 5 years.
They wore like iron.

 

Corey, while they look similar, the tread and sidewalls are definitely different. Hopefully you will get better mileage out of them.

 

You should definatley go whites out. There's just something about it that looks so much cooler.

 

I can not stand white letters out.
Ram 'em for years, to much trouble to take care of.
With all black out, piece of cake to clean

 

I have also noticed fast tread wear. Bumer.

Lamm

 

sorry to bring this back from the dead, but do any other people have any input on the fast tread wear? I am looking to get new tires ASAP because the BFG at's are sold out at my dealer in 285/75

thanks all

alex

 

i have the cooper S/T, and they were chipping bad and had weird wear, i.e. super fast. i called cooper, keep them up to date for a few weeks, they sent me a new air and tread depth gauge, they still wore fast, so they gave me 4 new 10 ply S/T-C's, they are supposed to hold up better to chipping, i'm just wondering about how they do in the snow?

but for cooper to give me 4 new more expensive tires says alot. regardless what happens with these tires, i'm sticking with cooper from now on.

 

Take a look at my sticky in here, and get your Coopers checked.
Just had my Cooper clones done last Saturday, mine were not in the recall.

https://www.yotatech.com/forums/f123/attention-tire-recall-some-cooper-tire-models-99295/

 

yeah they gave me the s/t-c and they were not on the recall, any idea or know of a thread, about the s/t-c in snow?

 

Cooper recalled S/T's a couple years ago for chipping & cracking (i.e. safety) reasons.

The S/T-C is a stiffer (hence more chip resistant) version of the standard S/T. I'd be willing to bet the S/T-C will slip around a bit more than the standard S/T in the cold stuff since its compounds are a bit harder.