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I have recently been given the opportunity to through the great folks here at Yotatech and Yokohama tire to review a set of the new Yokohama G003 M/T tire. I will keep things updated here as well as my build thread social media etc.
But let's talk about these tires. My initial impression is, they are everything you could want in a M/T tire, very deep lugs with good separation for good clean out, a fair amount of side wall tread, siping in the lugs for improved wet weather and snow and ice conditions.
The tires are got are a 35/12.50/17 load range E tire so they are heavy, I will do my best to get them on a scale and get an accurate weight. I also intend to get some actual height measurements, but I will say for now just standing them next to my current 315/70/17s they appear to be a lot closer to a true 35.
I am currently shopping for a new set of wheels to get these mounted on, but I have a set of 2017 Tacoma wheels I'm going to use in the mean time just to get them rolling. I plan to have them mounted in the next few days so I can get some road miles on them and have everything ready for a wheeling trip the second week of July.
Those are a great looking tire. I think the rims will look good with them as well. With the meat they have on them, I would think that they would do really well.
So I finally have a small update, but more coming very soon.
i had initially planned to mount these tires on the Tacoma wheels as I posted but the more I thought about it I wanted something a little better than that, so I did a little shopping and came up with these.
Tires will be mounted today and I will be hitting the trails over the weekend, really stoked to start checking them out.
So I finally got these tires mounted up and have been able too give them an initial run through, and they have not disappointed.
To start, I'm always concerned about being able too balance a large tire like this, but these ballanced out fantastic, very nominal weight on each wheel, and a smooth ride on the road confirms it. I was pleasantly surprised at how quiet they were on the road as well, this may change over time as some tires do get louder with wear, but for now they are great. I haven't driven them on the road enough to comment on road manners but I expect them to do well for an aggressive mud terrain.
Now to off-road performance, again I am very impressed. I had the chance over the weekend to spend several miles off-road in every thing from slick mud rocks to 6 inch deep mud, they were in their element the whole time. I experienced things with these tires I have never before, on slick wet rocks give a little wheel spin and I would get a little tire squeal and they would just start gripping. In the deeper mud moderate wheel spin and they would clean out and just dig. another thing I noticed immediately, I aired down to 12psi and the side wall flex was instant, I really expected with a E rated tire to have a much stiffer ride.
I'm looking forward too getting some more road miles on them and definitely looking forward too getting them back in the dirt.
Anyway on to a few pics. Mounted up and ready to go Nice amount of sidewall flex for an initial air down Some sticky TN mud.
So an update on these great tires. I attended the "Climb The Falls" event at Hidden Falls adventure park in Tx back in July, after driving 1800 miles round trip on the road I'm am only more impressed, these tires are unbelievably quiet for an aggressive MT, they handled the trip without issue. Ran into heavy rain on the way home and felt totally confident at interstate speed.
As far as off road performance, I can't stress enough how well they grip. I was concerned about the soft compound in the TX rocks, I honestly expected to see some chunked lugs or other damage but not even a scar.
because I've been so impressed with how these tires have performed on the road, I didn't feel I was doing them justice running them on my 4runner so I swapped them over to my FJC because it gets driven far more often than the runner. I don't wheel the FJ like I do the runner but it sees it's share of dirt. This past weekend I attended an event and just getting into camp meant dealing with 6 inches of mud, these G003s shined in this stuff, they were totally in there eliment.
Having these tires on my FJ should give me a better opportunity to really use them and keep things updated a little better.
check out Toyota Trucks and Trails podcast for more conversation about these tires and more.
Using these on my FJ and they are brilliant off road on any kind of surface from rocks to mud but whats impressive is for an MT how well they behave on road and in rain and that too with minimal noise.
Recently did a mountain trip in heavy rains and some of the roads got filled with mud and I must say I never ever ran out of confidence thanks to these tires.