New tyres for the Dmax; our 5th set

Getting new 4WD tyres is exciting, and I always do my best to find the most suitable tyre for our application at the best price possible. This time, we’re onto our 5th set of tyres, and I settled on a tyre that I’d previously dismissed.

What 4WD tyres have we run?

When we got the Dmax, it came with the Bridgestone Dueler 693’s. They’re basically a road terrain tyre, and whilst we did use them a bit, they had to go. I replaced them with Toyo Open Country AT2 tyres, which we had a decent run from.

I then got a set of Bridgestone Dueler 697 tyres, which I liked as well, and ran them until they were basically dead.

Before our lap of Australia I fitted a set of Toyo Open Country RT tyres to our Hybrid camper and Dmax, and now after about 40,000km, they’re not suitable to take into the High Country again.

I rang everywhere I could around Traralagon (East of Melbourne), to find any tyre that would suit our needs, and eventually settled on a tyre that I didn’t really look into much initially.

What prices did we get?

For your information, these are some of the prices that we got, from all sorts of different tyre places – Bob Jane, Tyrepower, and lots of independent ones:

Falken Wildpeak – $320 to $398 each

Toyo Open Country RT – $320 to $445 each (not available in time at the cheap price)

Toyo Open Country AT3 – $320 each

Cooper RT – $390 each

Maxxis Razr 811 – $365 to $379 each

Kumho A52 – $ 289 each with a buy 4 for 3 deal

BFG K02 – $370 each

Road Cruza RA1100 – $230 each

Road Cruza RA8000 – $250 each

The thought process

I was looking for a decent, reasonably aggressive all terrain. There are some that are not on the list here, and really you can find a million brands (Yokahama, Mickey Thompson, Nitto etc etc), but I was getting very similar prices (around $360 to $440 for every tyre).

I liked the idea of the 4 for 3 deal on the Kumho A52, but didn’t feel the tread pattern was aggressive enough. I’ve not heard great things about the BFG KO2, but its fascinating that they are now one of the cheaper options, given them previously being known as one of the best tyres out there.

I got some prices for Chinese tyres, and I know you can get some very cheap ones, but I just couldn’t justify buying them with minimal reviews, and having issues in the middle of no where, or putting my family and setup at risk if they weren’t as good as I needed.

However, everything changed when I rang the Tyre factory in Traralgon, and got much cheaper prices. Ultimately, I decided to order the Falken Wildpeaks at $320 a tyre, and tyre something different.

That was, until I was told I could get the Toyo AT3’s for the same price, and I began to wonder. These weren’t even on my radar, until they were suggested, and I started doing some more digging.

There’s a lot of happy people with the Wildpeaks, but I have heard of some sidewall and balancing issues, and they have a new model (the AT4W) that should be released in Australia, and the more I compared the tread patterns, the reputations and spoke to different tyre places, the Toyo seemed to be the logical choice.

The tread is more aggressive, its an improvement on the AT2 and most places suggested that Toyo was a better quality product. It’s a funny one though, because I’d have gone the Falkens if they were cheaper, but they weren’t!

What did we get?

After much deliberation, I’ve gone with 6 new Toyo Open Country AT3 tyres. These are the newer version from the AT2’s that we’ve run in the past, and although I initially dismissed them, it was hard to go past at the price. Ultimately it came down to the Falken Wildpeak AT3W and the Toyo AT3, and the tread pattern, plus multiple tyre places stating that the Toyos are a better tyre won me over. They’re made in Japan, balance well, and are just a really good quality tyre in general.

I was really impressed with the Toyo Open Country RT tyres, and was considering replacing our tyres with them, but they weren’t available at a comparable price, so they got scrubbed off the list.

I really wanted to try the Falkens, but hopefully their new version will be here next time we have to replace the shoes.

What did we pay?

We ended up paying $320 per Toyo Open Country AT3, plus a $16 disposal fee for the old tyres, bringing it to a total of $2016 for 6 tyres, which I was quite happy with.

I took 2 of the Toyo RT tyres and put them as our spares, and ditched the two existing spares that were both about 6 years old (and basically brand new!).

As usual, you’ll know how these go for us, in our initial thoughts post, and our unbiased review, once we’ve had them for a while. As of right now, they’ve only been on for about a week, and have been absolutely hammered through the Victorian High Country, and they’ve been pretty good in terms of traction, with only a few minor negatives to mention later on.

Do you reckon we made a good choice?

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