Why would that matter? The original steelies.
I think it is a fair question because my data shows that the width of the rim DOES matter.
Because this is a thread about tires mounted on wheels that are, "too narrow" and how they are wearing.
Nice hearing from you @BudgetBronco ! I just put on 265/75/16 Grabbers on my 22 Base, a touch smaller than yours, but I love the look. Good to hear an in depth wear report!
No offense intended to anyone but I have a different mindset and, FWIW, I typically swap tires between 45 and 50K. I have *never* exceeded 60K on any car or truck I've ever owned in nearly 50 years of driving. Ever. Nor have I ever sought a tire with an expected tread life of more than 60K. A supple ride was always more important to me, than saving a few bucks or trying to extend to reach max tire life. Tires determine my traction/grip between my vehicle and any surface that I drive on and, IMO, are *the most important* part of any vehicle. I learned this driving Mustangs in the past and now my Corvette ... and I treat my Bronco tires the same as I would any car I've ever owned.
You do bring up good points I forgot to mention. I didn’t realize how different the road noise and ride felt until u got the new tires on. I also noticed puddles had a bit more grab than usual with my old set. So, I definitely understand the benefits. It wasn’t undrivable, but I also respect your commitment to quality tires!
Should have let the dealer replace the tires then. It gets you nothing on trade in value.
Me, too! It does everything I need it to do.
Formerly an American company, General Tire was acquired by German foreign aggressor Continental AG in 1987.Back in August of 2021 I was one of the first to mount 285-75-R16 tires on Base steel wheels. See full post linked here. At the time a lot of people noted that these tires might not wear properly because they are designed to fit on a rim width of 7.5 to 9 inches, and the Base steelies are only 7 inches wide. The thinking is that compressing the beads inward will cause the middle of the tread pattern to bulge outward a bit, and cause uneven tire wear.
So now that I have 30k miles on the Bronco and all 5 tires have been through a full cycle of tire rotations, in the words of Project Farm, we're gonna test that!
I used a tread depth gauge to measure each tire in three different places around the circumference, and at each testing point I measured the tread depth at the inner tread, middle, and outer tread. Here is the table of measurement results:
My calculation of 'Bulge' shows the average difference in tread wear between the inner/outer tread and the middle of the tread. So sure enough, the tires are wearing a little bit faster in the middle, about one and a half 32nds of an inch over the 30k vehicle miles so far (each tire has about 24k road miles since I use the spare as part of my rotation pattern). I guess the real question for this audience will be, is this amount of increased tread wear acceptable? In my opinion, it is.
Also by using the rate of wear so far, I can project that the tires should get to 60,000 miles before they wear down to 4/32 of tread left at which time they should be replaced.
See below with video of full results and let me know if any questions
The OEM versions are different then the regular retail versions.
