Topic: BFGoodrich All Terrain KO2 35x12.50 15 Review

[Gnarly4X]

H8PVMNT,

I’m surprised you felt these hydroplane?  The design with siping and softer compound, they should do very well on wet pavement?  The dry traction on my earlier ATs was awesome.

The ones I just put on will be the 2nd set, but I ran the older style before.  I can see that these look like they have more squat.. softer sidewall?  They are more aggressive looking with the treaded wrapped side sidewall (Advanced Deflection).  It won’t surprise me to see these wear out sooner than the older style, but 24K miles is NOT economical!  BFG advertises "Tougher Rubber"?

Your photo looks like the center tread area was wearing more. What PSI were you running mostly?

Very nicely done review!

Gnarls.

[H8PVMNT [OP]]

About 25-30 psi.  Flatter tread patch was at like 21 psi. The 12.50s are really rounded on an 8" wheel.  If you check out the early photos you can see it. This size really needs to be on a 10" wheel.   

Wet pavement traction was outstanding, like just wet, what wasn't impressive was pooling water in rutted pavement.

We have good paved 2 laners in my county but they get a lot of heavy truck traffic from the farmers so they are badly rutted with the occasional 2"+ puddle.  You hit any water deeper than about a half inch with this tire in this size and watch out.  If you see it coming you can just veer around the rut or puddle a bit. 

It's true the sipes are great, but the tread design is such that water can just squirt out of the tread.  This was not an issue in the narrower size we ran on our 1 ton.  But 12.50 wide this tread will hydroplane.

If you are running 31x10.50s I'll bet they won't have this problem at all.

[Charles4x4]

Great running review. I have 35s on my 80 series and agree with your findings. Great in snow and especially in ice. Not so great in mud. They do fine on rocks when aired down, but not so much at higher pressure (seem to struggle to grab in rocks).

[kneedownnate]

Just pulled a set off one of my customers who's a forester and found he got way more miles on them than either of us thought.  He'd only rotated them once the whole time... in 48,000 miles 

Fronts were smoked on the inside edge due to balljoints/alignment/whatever, rears were down to 3-4/32" tread in the middle.  This is on a truck that runs up and down nasty, overgrown and unused dirt roads that've been gated off for many years, every. single. day.

[Dingman.]

I didnt realize until now this wasnt the original bfg ko2 thread.  Had to go here to see the mileage from when i got them installed.
http://board.marlincrawler.com/index.php?topic=97467.0;message=1128733

I now have 244,950 miles on my truck so i have 31,324 miles on my tires. They measure within a thousand of an inch between all four tires and i have only rotated them 2-3 times i think.  8.5/32" - 9/32" of tread left after 31,324 miles and new they came with 15/32 according to bfg's website.  So worst tire has 57% tread left if my math is correct.

[Gnarly4X]

In my experience.. 4x4 trucks since 1986… with all the different tires, I found that rotating them is critical to longer usable life and reducing cupping, especially with the mud tires.  I rotate and have them rebalanced on my truck MUD and AT style tires every 5,000 miles, every 7,000 miles on my passenger cars.

These new BFGs have a Max Load at PSI of 50.  I run them at about 25 PSI in the front and 22 PSI in the rears, unloaded, on the street and get very even wear.   My 1985 Standard Cab was about 3200 lbs curb weight.  My 1986 XtraCab is about 3500 lbs curb weight.

Gnarls.

[blackdiamond]

Mine are still too new to make any real judgements, but on my Sequoia they are certainly no match on the pavement for the Goodyear Forterra Triple Treads (discontinued SUV street tire).  They definitely have a rougher ride like from having stiffer sidewalls (mine are Load Range C), a bit noisier, and the one time I pushed them up to 80 mph I really seemed to feel the speed more than I did before.  I rarely am anywhere were 70+ mph isn't "going fast" so I'm sure I'll settle in just fine after a few mile on the Colorado trip.

[Slabzilla]

I've got a little over 12k on my 10-15 KO2's and they are wearing quite well with rotation at 7k miles.  I reported earlier that they made a noise that reminded me of an axle bearing going out, well my front wheel bearing was going out.
Replaced both sides because that's the way I do things, no more noise, surprise. In the rain in So-Cal this year I noticed Hydroplaning in deep the water we had during the rains, I don't think any tire would have made it through some of the lakes we had on our freeways down here. In the snow these things were tits. 

[H8PVMNT [OP]]

I didnt realize until now this wasnt the original bfg ko2 thread.  Had to go here to see the mileage from when i got them installed.
http://board.marlincrawler.com/index.php?topic=97467.0;message=1128733

I now have 244,950 miles on my truck so i have 31,324 miles on my tires. They measure within a thousand of an inch between all four tires and i have only rotated them 2-3 times i think.  8.5/32" - 9/32" of tread left after 31,324 miles and new they came with 15/32 according to bfg's website.  So worst tire has 57% tread left if my math is correct.

So in the right application these are lasting a long, long time still.  Good to hear it.  I may run them again on a full sized or something without a spool .

[helipilot77]

I got a flatter footprint at about the mid 20s psi range but still a pretty round tread face.  30-35 psi kept me totally on the center treads.  These tires want to be pretty round on an 8" wheel. I think they need to be on 10".  Your duratracs are pretty flat on a 71x9 aren't they?

yeah my Duratracs are pretty flat across the tread on the 17"x9" wheels they are on.

[H8PVMNT [OP]]

Sold the rest of these to a buddy for his '99 4Runner.  He was mainly interested in them because they match (his current 35s didn't ) and for snow wheeling.  He lives over by Missoula where most of the mud is gravelly.  I will post up what he thinks and what the approximate end mileage is.