A few of you were interested in another thread that chronicled my evolving solution to what I wanted in an exclusively off-road wheel/tire package, something I could put on for a trip to the mountains or out to Moab or Colorado, but not run as a daily.
In my search I was stymied because I really wanted to stay in the 285mm range (11"ish) rather than going with the ubiquitous 12.5. In fact, other than the 285/75-18, I couldn't find anything taller than my 285/75-17 BFG KM2s that wasn't also at least a 12.5" wide tire.
Ultimately, Forum member Sicarii suggested a size I'd never heard of -- Q78. Interco makes a Super Swamper in Q78-16, but other than that they seem to be thin on the ground. The nominal specs were 36x11, darn near perfect for me!
After some waffling over the fact they're bias plies and have a 1" deep lug, so on-road travel was likely to be torture, I finally pulled the plug last Monday. Ordered from Amazon, of all places -- few people carry these tires. Price was very good for a larger-than-35 option, being delivered for 297.89 ea, $1489 for five. Delivery was an amazing 3 days, coming in on Thursday. Free shipping of 350# of tires and it came in 3 days.
Before going into any specifics on the tires, I'll tell about the wheels.
I've always admired what Forum member Espo78 did about four years ago when he used a Wheel Vintiques 15" steel wheel, painted white like his Jeep, to achieve an early-70s CJ vibe. So I started researching the 16" version of same. Turned out to be cheap ($535 for 5, delivered, including state sales tax, but shipping was free) from Summit Racing. And delivery was even quicker than the tires -- these arrived on Wednesday, as though they had been Amazon Prime!
My plan was to paint the wheels Anvil. I had one can lying around. Sprayed one wheel as a test when they came in, and ordered six more cans of Anvil. Unfortunatly those haven't arrived yet (For comparison to the tires and wheels, the six cans weighed about 4 pounds and cost me 14 bucks to ship, and I still don't have them!) Anyway, I also had some Rustoleum in a very close color, so I decided to lay down four coats over the weekend in that dark gray so there'd be a good basecoat before I sprayed the Anvil. Of course I couldn't wait to get the tires mounted so I just went ahead and did that with the dark gray paint. It's not as blue as the Anvil but I'll tape the tires up and spray Anvil whenever the paint finally comes in.
Okay, I'll give a couple teaser photos to end this post, and then another post or two with details and measurements and some more photos so this one doesn't get too long. Cheers!
In my search I was stymied because I really wanted to stay in the 285mm range (11"ish) rather than going with the ubiquitous 12.5. In fact, other than the 285/75-18, I couldn't find anything taller than my 285/75-17 BFG KM2s that wasn't also at least a 12.5" wide tire.
Ultimately, Forum member Sicarii suggested a size I'd never heard of -- Q78. Interco makes a Super Swamper in Q78-16, but other than that they seem to be thin on the ground. The nominal specs were 36x11, darn near perfect for me!
After some waffling over the fact they're bias plies and have a 1" deep lug, so on-road travel was likely to be torture, I finally pulled the plug last Monday. Ordered from Amazon, of all places -- few people carry these tires. Price was very good for a larger-than-35 option, being delivered for 297.89 ea, $1489 for five. Delivery was an amazing 3 days, coming in on Thursday. Free shipping of 350# of tires and it came in 3 days.
Before going into any specifics on the tires, I'll tell about the wheels.
I've always admired what Forum member Espo78 did about four years ago when he used a Wheel Vintiques 15" steel wheel, painted white like his Jeep, to achieve an early-70s CJ vibe. So I started researching the 16" version of same. Turned out to be cheap ($535 for 5, delivered, including state sales tax, but shipping was free) from Summit Racing. And delivery was even quicker than the tires -- these arrived on Wednesday, as though they had been Amazon Prime!
My plan was to paint the wheels Anvil. I had one can lying around. Sprayed one wheel as a test when they came in, and ordered six more cans of Anvil. Unfortunatly those haven't arrived yet (For comparison to the tires and wheels, the six cans weighed about 4 pounds and cost me 14 bucks to ship, and I still don't have them!) Anyway, I also had some Rustoleum in a very close color, so I decided to lay down four coats over the weekend in that dark gray so there'd be a good basecoat before I sprayed the Anvil. Of course I couldn't wait to get the tires mounted so I just went ahead and did that with the dark gray paint. It's not as blue as the Anvil but I'll tape the tires up and spray Anvil whenever the paint finally comes in.
Okay, I'll give a couple teaser photos to end this post, and then another post or two with details and measurements and some more photos so this one doesn't get too long. Cheers!