Smooth Highway Tires?

I just fleabayed some ZJ sawblade style wheels and am considering getting new 235/75X15's put on them. It's gonna cost $20 per wheel to have my 225/70's changed over anyway so I figured why not go a little bigger?

Does anybody have any good experience with General, Goodyear, or Goodrich All-Season Highway tires? These three are the cheapest at the NTB around here and they're running a 4 for 3 price deal right now.

I need/want quiet, smooth ride with good wet traction. The Conti's I have on now were great for the first 10K miles in the rain but are now starting to get a little squirrley around corners when the roads are wet. They (the Continentals) only have 12K on them, so the tread looks great still. I'm just wondering if anybody could recommend a smooth, CHEAP on-road tire. I don't care about mudding or rock crawling so I don't want the big lug sidewalls.

This is for a 94 XJ Country that's all stock. BTW the original Wranglers that came on it were the worst rain tire I'd ever experienced.

you really didnt say what "cheap" is to you.. so i will tell you to look at the GoodYear Wrangler AT/S .. its a great tire especially in wet and snow.. it has 2 huge water channels around the circumference of the tread. i am on my 2nd set of them on a daily driver and will buy a 3rd set when the time comes.. i run 30s currently but my last set were 235s.. they come in 2 load ratings as well so the lower rated tire is perfect for a D/D and runs about $15 cheaper on www.tirerack.com i think a 235 would run you about $90/ea....

mike

All three of the companies you mentioned make several different tires that fit the "All Season" description. It would help if you tell us what tires you're looking at, or if you don't have a tire in mind, what the price range is.

BTW -- If your tires are 225/70R15 it's no surprise the tires look a mite small. The OEM tires were 225/75. Going from 225/70 to 235/75 will be a significant jump, but I think ALL street XJs should ride on 235/75s if not 30x9.50s.

Right...I'm looking to spend less than 300 bones all told (mounted and balanced). The General tire is the Amerias, the Goodyear is the Weatherhandler, and I can't remember the name of the Goodrich model.

The 70 series are on there as a result of an "adjustment". We replaced the original Wranglers with a set of Generals at 40K miles. Those tires wore really wierd and at 18K miles they were shot. Since they had a 60,000 mi warrenty they adjusted for the difference and offered my wife the Continental 70's as a replacement. The XJ was her car then.

The Contis are wearing well but are too small as you have noted. If/when I replace them with tires of the correct size (235/75), That means this will be the fourth set of tires on an XJ with 70,000 miles on it!!

I have a set of Uniroyal Tiger Paw AWP (225/75) on my DD 88XJ... had them for approx 6000 miles since late Dec... several light snow/ice events and some heavy rain, and I think they do just fine. I am not an aggressive driver though.

Not so cheap, but I'm on my second set of Michelin ATs. First set lasted about 75K and I'm currently at 50K on the second. You may find that spending an extra $100 on four tires may save you considerably more in the long run particularly if you intend to keep the jeep.

Hmmm ...

The original Goodyear Vectors lasted over 60,000 miles on my '88. Oh, well.

Cooper makes a nice highway tire. Don't recall the name of it, I think it's the Discoverer H/T or something like that. I'm fairly sure it has an 'H' in it because I always thought the 'H' was for "highway." The tread has a narrow, solid rib down the center for tracking on pavement. Not sure if you can get 4 for 300 clams, though.

Cooper makes great tires. They'll cost more than 3 bills though... I run Procomp (cooper makes them) on my XJ and my YJ. Been extremely pleased with them for the last 3 years. I have a thing about buying anything from :flamemad: France :looser: so I can't buy Michelin or BFG's but they do make pretty good tires.

My vote is for BFG AT. I’m running a set in 31” x 10.5” and they work great in the rain and snowy slush stuff. They may be a tad aggressive if you do all of your driving on the pavement and never use gravel roads or see snow. They are quiet on the highway and the common sizes (30” x 9.5”, 235/75) are usually relatively cheap.

In all my tire hunting and pricing the best tire prices I have found anywhere are at BJ's Wholesale, kind of a sams club only not as big. Don't know if you have them in your area but they beat NTB and Sears sale prices by over 30%. I put 4 BFG's AT KO's on my 98XJ in LT235/75R15 for $104 a tire, that included mounting, balancing, lifetime balance and rotation, lifetime roadhazard, removal and dispostal of the old Dunlops that were on there. Had a sidewall puncutre and they had me in and out in 30 mins.
As for the best all round tire, my vote goes to the Pirelli Scorpion AT, awsome tire when sears carried it for a reasonable price and they lasted about 50K of a 160mi a day commute.

Thanks all..

I went with the Goodyears. After bringing the wheels home and cleaning them up, I put em on the car and torqued em to 100 ft.lbs. I went for a ride after but it's so friggin windy today (steady 25 mph with gusts to 45), that I can't tell how noisy they are. The ride is a little stiffer than with the Contis but I haven't checked the air pressure yet. It's not suppoesed to rain here all week so I won't know about wet traction for a while. That's the first time I've wished for rain since we sodded the yard of the last house we were in!

I'm not really concerned with how many miles I get out of this set, since it's taken over 10 years (model year 94 bought new in Oct.93) to get to 70K. At this rate the tires will outlast the rest of the car.

I will say that the combination of the "new" wheels with the right size tires makes it look about 10 times better than before. The original wheels are the "lace" style that come on the Country model. The clearcoat has been flaking off and the underlying aluminum has been oxydizing and won't come clean.

Thanks to everyone again...Norm

Yes, you already bought tires, but to chime in for others reading...

If you're nice to tire places in town, and haggle... I've paid $340 initially for a set of 4 235/75R15 Cooper Discoverer ATs, and now get them for $300 that's out the door total with tax.
They're an AT, but they wear well, and aren't too noisy and having ran BFG ATs a couple times, they're far better.

Great tire for the money, I ran MT/Rs for 5k miles then sold them, and have been far happier with the Cooper ATs. The MT/Rs were 30x9.5s, and the coopers 235s, I'm sticking with 235s from now on for stock, little more room to flex on stock suspension AND unlike 30x9.5s, no worries on control arm rubbing. Better choice for an all around on-road and off-road tire than the MT/R. The cooper AT in my testing of going everywhere I went with MT/Rs does just fine.

Teron

RichP said:

As for the best all round tire, my vote goes to the Pirelli Scorpion AT, awsome tire when sears carried it for a reasonable price and they lasted about 50K of a 160mi a day commute.

Click to expand...

I realize that the original poster already bought his tires... but...

I'll second the Pirellis. By the time I bought mine (Nov '02, from The Tire
Rack website), Sears had already discontinued them (even though the
salesguy I talked to had seemingly loved the Pirellis as well!). TireRack
had 'em for $75 a pop, plus shipping, and I had to have a local shop
(a "participating partner" with TireRack.com) mount and balance them.

All told, no more than $350, for P235/75R15.

Excellent tires all around. Beat the pants off the stock Goodyear RT/S's
that were on there. Better wet traction, better dry traction, better snow
traction, quieter, better steering feel and stability, neat little white Scorpion
insignias... all for $50 a tire LESS than the Goodyear store's price for
crappy ol' RT/S's. (I know, I had to buy one when my Jeep was just 9k
old after it got, uh, screwed...). Oh yeah, the RT/S also had ZERO
treadwear warranty.(Pirelli is 40k). SO far, mine have 18k on them, and still
look darned-near like new... minimal wear.

Den

Too late to say so but Goodyear, in my not so humble opinion, SUCKS uke: . They wear poorly and quickly from my experience. I already put my vote in for Coopers but I'll second Toyos. The open country AT's I put on the wife's ZJ are great and I have a set of open country 235's bought when I had to drive to Daytona from JAX everyday. I bought them on a set of jeep wheels already 50% worn and the lasted so well that after 12k they still look like they did when I picked them up. I hope your Goodyear experience is better than mine have been.

The BFG A/T TA's I just replaced had over 60K on them, and easily has another 5-10K on them. After 5 years I was just tired of them. The BFGs might be a tad noisy if it's a purely street driven vehicle. I replaced mine with Yokohama Geolandar AT II's, and so far I'm pleased. Noise level is about the same, but a different pitch (a bit higher)....

Before I lifted my XJ, I had a set of Dunlop Grandtreks that I thought were great as a street based tire. Good in the snow, not too loud, and just enough of an aggressive look to still have a little "cred".... ;>)

We just got back from the movies and a sams club visit for Mobil-1 stock up, was walking thru their tire section and noticed they are now carrying BFG AT/KO's in 31x105.50 which they never carried before, they always had those higway versions. Cost was $105 per tire plus $9.00 M&B plus sales tax. Not a bad price for a 31" BFG...

I tried to buy tires from Costco last round but they gave me a bunch of lawyer nonsense :smsoap: about only putting OEM sized tires on my Jeep. They said if I got a letter from Jeep Corp. they'd install the oversized tires... Yeah right like that's going to happen, Jeep told me the strongly recommended I keep the rollerskate 225's. Sam's allow you to choose your own tire size?

They can go one size higher than the body sticker I think, but BJ's gave me no problem with LT235's on my XJ. If I was going to put the 31's on one of the TJ's I'd take the wheels in seperate with no jeep attached, if they ask, it's for my lawn tractor not that it's any of their business...