Okay I've been talking to a friend of mine, who has a 2002 Ford Ranger Edge, he is lifting his soon and adding bigger tires. He talked me into the idea of putting 32 x11.50s on mine when I lift it 2.5" in Nov. I was originally going to put 31x10.50s but he thinks they will look small. Anyone got opinions on that one? I really want the 32s, I would love to get the MTs instead of the A/Ts strictly b/c of the aggresive look. Do any of you run the MTs, or no anything about them? If so let me know if they wear faster than A/Ts and about how muchmore expensive are they than A/Ts? Thanks.

-Scott

 

Scott the 32's would look better but you want to take into consideration things like less gas mileage, power loss, and more wear and tear on your truck. If you are set on them and don't mind the small sacrifices I would definitly go with them. If you don't run offroad very often you would probably be better off with the A/T tire. They wear better and are quiter on the road. As far as price, the M/T's are $145 a tire and the A/T's are $127 for 32X11.5X15 on tirerack.com. Anyone else have some opinions?

 

I agree with you there UKMyers, depending on your current gear set up Stump1883, going up 1 increment in size may only be a small sacrafice in performance though.

Stump1883, with 2.5" of lift you could probably even go with 33's (depending on wheels and tires), but without changing gears, you will take an even bigger hit in performance just as UKMyers said.

I would go for the bigger tires as well. I think 31's will look too small once it is lifted. Putting bigger tires on your 4Runner is the reason you are lifting it in the first place ... isn't it? Otherwise, why spend the money on the lift?

As far as which tires to go with, yes the M/T's will be louder and probably won't last as long as the A/T. But I prefer the M/T's myself for off-roading. I have heard pretty good feedback on BFG M/T's lasting well up into the 50,000's, which IMO is excellent.

 

What size tires are you running now? I've got 32s on my rig (up from factory 29s, 225/75-15). I did notice a moderate power loss, but the big thing was gas mileage. I dropped from about 20mpg to 16-17mpg depending. A couple of cheap mods (like the deckplate mod) come close to restoring the lost power. I only notice the power loss when towing or accelerating uphill.

Oh, and I have Bridgestone ATs and love them.

 

if you dont like the idea of losing power and gas mileage etc etc (like me) then you might want to consider just getting a new set of wheels/tires for when you are offroading or want your truck to look really nice. its not hard to change some tires. but if you get a 2.5" lift you dont want to be going around with 225's on.... well just something to think about. that's what i am probably going to do.

 

right now i am just waiting on some parts for my lift and i am debating on whether or not i will put on the 32's or 33's. personally i want the 33's more than anything. but the main problem is that since i have the 15" rims, i can only get the 33's in a 12.50 width. this creates the problem of rubbing against the A-arm. fortunately since i have less than stock backspacing, i will have a better chance of fitting the 33x1250's. I talked to a guy at Goodyear and he told me that when i am ready to buy after my lift, we can test out the 33's at full turn to see if they fit or not. and if not then i will be forced to settle for the 32's.

As for the power loss situation, right now i have 31's with 3.73 gears and 4cyl 5 speed. it takes a while to get up to speed and i definitetly notice a difference with the larger tires so i know that with the 33's I will be hurting if i dont regear to 5.29 gears.

hope this helps. i will have everything installed as soon as i recieve my ATS upper control arms so you can leave the 33x1250 experimentation to me and i will let you all know how it goes when im done.

-Casey

 

Thanks guys. This seems to be a bigger issue than I orginally conceived. I really don't want 33s at all, they cause alot of things to have to be changed and what not. I 32s no doubt, 31s would just look plain small and stupid after 2.5" inches. My only delimma lies with weather to buy the A/T's or M/Ts. I do little to no off-roading anymore, all my 4WD truck buddies that use to let me tag along(and acutually got a kick out of me being 2WD and still wanting to do things) are all gone off to college and I don't have any opertunities any more:cry: . But I still do LOVE the look of the M/Ts. How bad are we talking when we say "loss of acceleration"(I love the power available in my Runner vs. my Rover firends) and the issue of "road noise"? Exactly how bad are we saying these things are vs the A/Ts.

 

I really need to know some of these things about M/Ts vs. A/Ts there is only so much you can read about tires, and then you have to talk to the people that actually own and dirve on them day in and day out, labs mean nothing, real world experiances is what I'm after here. Thanks guys.

 

you have a 2wd? hmm.. good luck with that. haha well good luck on fitting 33's i hope you can do it.

 

2WD isn't that hard. The lift suggested to me consist of fron spacers, and read Downey coils. It's not 33's either, it's 32x11.50. They should fit fine after 2.5". Or atleast I hope they will, everyone says they should, but I'm going to have to slide some in there to make sure after the lift.

 

i meant good luck offroading w/ a 2wd... just dont go anywhere to extreme and you'll be ok.

and casey is the one who was talking about 33's. 32's will be fine after 2.5" lift. i know i can fit 31's on my truck without a problem.. without a lift at all.

 

Oh yeah, 2WD off-road, well that never happens. Mine is mostly a street machine. I go trail running with my 4WD buddies, all Chevy and Ford boys(ah well, not everyone can be as perfect as us Toyoata people), but that is about the extent of what my truck sees in the way of off-raoding. This lift is just so I can get the aggressive stance and bad ass look of a lifted truck. So that, and 31s I know they will fit w/o a lift, but if I'm going up 2.5" no need to put 31s under there only to look small w/ that much space b/w, might as well go ahead and fill the wheel wells, w/o going to 33s and all the probs they bring to the game.