Tire page


My truck came with DUNLOP W/P265/70/16 tires which worked very fine for normal street / mild off road use. High performance street / strip drag racing however, posed a challenge for the stock tires in the traction category. Not long after I had the Supercharger installed, I sufficiently burned off the tread and decided to upgrade. (44500 miles)

 


 

My choice for the first tire replacement was the MICHELIN PILOT LTX

From the moment I drove off the parking lot and encountered the slightest amount of road crown, I hated these tires. For what ever reason, and I heard many including: 1)The additional belts required for high speed rating 2)The compound of the tire 3)The wide vertical grooves ... the tires caused the truck to wander and handle like crap. The performance at the drag strip was no better ... I believe the LTX's had more trouble hooking up than the stock DUNLOP's. I did try to improve the handling by: 1) Changing the air pressure 2)Balancing balancing balancing 3)Alignment adjustments 4) New shocks / struts. The bottom line is that for my application, nothing worked and I would not recommend this tire for anyone running a TOYOTA 4Runner.

 


It took me just over 46K miles to burn off the LTX's (Thank God !) and I just purchased a set of Pirelli Scorpion S/T's.

I did a lot of research and the S/T was not my first choice but considering the overall driving conditions here in Michigan I decided that it was a must that I use something that will hook up in the snow. I may decide (actually I must figure out how to justify with the wife) to go with new rims and a set of Scorpion Zero's for summer street rodding.

I noticed an immediate and incredible improvement in how my truck handles. No more wandering around at the slightest road crown or imperfection. Time will tell how they hook up at the track, but for now I am very happy.


Well, I had to replace my tires again and I must say that the Pirelli's did very well all things considered. I got 44000 miles on them with no problems (except the tread falling off :-) This time I decided to go with a set of TOYO Open Country A/T's.


 

 

Well, another set of tires was required after 38K miles... "still burning lots of rubber ;-)". The Toyo Open Country tires worked very well but I decided to go with a set of Falcon Ziex S/TZ-04's. I have had very good results with Falcon tires on my STi so I decided to give them a try on the 4Runner. O.. the 4Runner has 173,900 miles on it now...still making lots of power and holding up very well.


O... I should mention... the main reason I don't get so many miles on my tires is shown below, this happens a lot on the street and the Drag Strip ;-)

 


A word (or two) about tire balancing...

As you may have read on other TOYOTA webpages or message boards it is a fact that TOYOTA TACOMA's and 4Runners have very sensitive front ends. Tire balancing is a challenge and most dealers and tire shops can not do it accurately. My expierence is that balancing the TOYOTA's requires the use of a road force balancing machine. Some will argue my next point but MY expierence is that the special "haweka" adapter was not required to achieve a proper balance on my 4Runner.


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