Anyway, over a year ago, while doing a project called Oasis (amazon pilot for a series) we were building some 'off planet' vehciles based on discovery 1s with oversized tyres
The tyres we use are often industrial or agricultural tyres and recently Cheaper Chinese imports have become far more economical to use for builds. we don't need them to last forever but the quality of the Chinese stuff has been right up there with the US and Euro products at 5 or 6 times the price.
Anyway.. whilst there, they showed me the range of road tyres they'd just started bringing in, and the 35 x 12'5" muds were R1800 each at the time (now R2200) . Crushers were over R6k at the time and Coopers were around R4k
So I bought a set to test.
Well, first of all I was a bit dubious about the sidewalls as they felt a little bit soft compared to the tyres I was taking off. but so far, Rocks and tree roots have not done a side wall.
Grip is superb. In mud, they aren't crushers, but they will certainly compete with a Cooper. On dirt they are fantastic - very very grippy and on road they are very good too - a bit squeaky under heavy cornering in the dry, but very high levels of grip for a mud, and the same in the wet.
I have them mounted to a set of Dick Cepek 9" rims, and I've run them a lot at 0,4bar in the dunes, throwing it around really heavily and not a sign of a debead. In fact, we just did another job in Namibia and 2 of the vehicles were equipped with 33" Power Trac m/Ts on stock discovery rims, also at 0,4bar and hurled about - no problem at all.
on 30 000km They are around 25% down on tread , I tend to toss them at 50% worn, but if you are one of those guys that runs their muds to the last mm it seems you'll get to 90 or 100 000km with them.
they have got slightly noiser as they've worn, like all muds, but certainly very acceptable levels for a mud,
they are rated for 160km/h and I ran them up to 190km/h at the track one day with no issues after a few laps of hard driving.
I'm very impressed with these tyres as a tyre - they are as good or better than most of the common ones. but as a cheap option they are superb!
I've just collected a set of 285/75R16s for yoga girl's D90 - R1650 ex VAT each before fitting.
we've also used their A/Ts and H/Ts on projects and have no complaints at all. Good value!
