- What's going on guys?
Fuller here with Custom Offsets,
Custom Offsets TV on the YouTube.
And it is time that we get very serious about winter tires.
Now, I know a lot of people out here,
that are watching the videos and the guys that are
running all these show trucks,
not necessarily everybody wants to have two different sets
of tires, or you just don't want to spend the money
to own two sets of tires,
to do with the hassle of switching them back and forth,
and all that stuff.
So, I just did want to briefly cover though
a few of the tires that are available on the market
that are better suited for winter driving conditions,
especially for people like us,
within Wisconsin we get a ton of snow.
Our friends in Canada deal with the same kind of problems
where a typical all-season tire
if you come from the car world
is not designed to work in lots of snow.
They're made for very, very minimal snow.
And if you're new to trucks or you haven't owned one
before or aren't sure anything about truck tires,
in the car world you've basically got
UHP tires, which are ultra-high performance.
You've got all-seasons, and then you've got winter tires,
and they each have their own things,
and own characteristics that make them better suited
for your needs.
Now in the truck world,
you're gonna see all-terrain tires,
hybrid tires, and mud tires.
And now basically, none of those are going to be the best
in snow, but we do have a couple different options
that are really, really decent.
So we're kinda gonna cover some of those
because your all-terrain tires
a lot of times don't get the look that you're wanting.
The hybrid tires are probably your best bet
when it comes to snow driving.
And then the mud tires, although they work
really, really good in the deep, off-road stuff,
they're just not designed for on-road use with ice and snow.
And the tread compound just is too hard
for cold driving conditions.
So with that we'll jump into the first one,
it's gonna be the Nitto Exo Grappler,
which you probably haven't even heard of.
So Nitto has a whole line-up
of different trail grapplers, ridge grapplers,
and then the Exo Grappler like I'm talking about
is the one, like I said,
you probably haven't heard of before.
John, who actually works here,
ran a set of these up on his truck,
so we got a chance to kind of drive them around
and see what we thought about those.
This tire was actually constructed
very, very similar to what you'd find in a hybrid tire,
where it has a four-block tread design.
Hybrid tires and mud tires, most of them
kind of follow that particular rule.
And these are made in sizes that range
from 17-inch diameter all the way up to 20-inch diameter.
So if you've got something bigger than that,
these aren't going to be the tires for you.
We'll kind of expand on that a little bit later.
Also, it's going to be a load E tire,
a 10-ply rated tire,
so if you're doing any sort of towing,
these are probably going to be just fine for you.
They'll definitely handle any kind of weight
that you're gonna throw at 'em.
What makes these tires better suited for the snow
is just the rubber compound that they're using.
It's a bit softer.
So you have to keep that in mind.
You could burn through these faster
if you drive on them all summer.
But with all of these tires,
they are three-peak mountain snowflake rated,
which is a real thing,
I know a couple of people thought that was kind of a joke,
but in some states, and I believe in Canada,
where you're required to have winter tires,
you must have something that has
the three-peak mountain snowflake rating.
So like I was talking about just a couple seconds ago,
because it's a softer compound,
you can possibly burn through these a little bit faster.
John ran them in dry conditions just fine,
we didn't see any sort of abnormal wear.
And a lot of that is due to the kind of staggered
tread blocks that they have on the side of these.
They actually use computers to kind of generate
what kind of angles they're gonna put them at.
It's called variable tread pitch.
And they do that not only to have better wear,
but also to decrease the noise that you're gonna hear
when you're driving on the road on these tires.
With the Exo Grappler, it is important to note
that the largest size you can get is actually
up to the 37 by 12.5,
so if you do have a lifted vehicle,
you can still run these on that application.
They do also come pre-drilled for studs,
so if you live in a state that allows those
and you wanna run studs in your tires,
so you definitely can.
We can't here in Wisconsin, but I know other places
do a lot of year-round studs,
so keep that in mind.
And then for size comparison,
between all these tires and the prices,
because that's what everybody wants to know,
I used roughly a 285 or 295/55 R20.
And for the Exo Grappler it's gonna come in
just over $1300 for the set of four.
And that does include free shipping right to your house.
The sister company that you probably do know
because I've mentioned it a couple times now
is Toyo, and Toyo also offers a tire that is designed
for winter and all-weather driving conditions.
That's called the Toyo Open Country CT.
There are a few more sizes
available for the Open Country CT.
They step all the way down to 16-inch
and then go up to 20-inch, so again not crazy
compared to the last one,
but you do get the option for 16-inch wheels
if you're that person who still somehow
runs 16-inch wheels.
I think everybody's pretty much moved on to 17,
even the off-road sizes, 18, 20, 22s and so on
for other vehicles out there.
These two are gonna be, just like Exo Grapplers,
they're 10-ply, that's load-range E,
so if you're doing any sort of towing
you'll be just fine.
Where these differ from the Exo Grappler
is primarily in the price and then in the siping.
So they're a little more expensive at $1500,
and then you'll also see that the siping on here
is not quite as elongated as it is on the Exo Grappler.
It's more shorter, jagged-cut lines, which still
do a good job of allowing you to accelerate and brake
in the snow just fine.
One of the terms that you're gonna hear me
keep saying throughout the video is siping.
And when I'm referring to that, it's the small, little cuts
in the tread blocks, and they're actually designed
to pick up snow.
Whereas a lot of times, people think you want to keep
your tread empty of snow, which is true.
That main tread, you want to evacuate snow from.
But, what those do is they actually pick up the snow
because snow-on-snow contact actually
gives you a pretty decent amount of grip,
which a lot of people I think
that are especially new to snow tires don't understand.
And in the truck world, even if you have 4-wheel drive,
everybody likes to remind you
that you don't necessarily have 4-wheel stop.
(car crashing)
And all this little siping in here
is actually what's gonna help you stop better
and have better turning as well.
So your wheels can only do one thing at a time,
whether that be turn, accelerate, or brake.
But you can't do them all at the same time.
So if you wanna keep the most amount of grip,
you're gonna pick up some of that snow,
stick it in the siping,
it's gonna grip to the other snow.
I know it sounds like it can't be true,
but it really is.
I've been driving on snow tires for the last,
probably five years.
And honestly once you start using tires designed for snow,
you'll never go back.
So next on the list is the Goodyear Wrangler Duratrac,
and now this is a tire that I've actually
had a ton of different experience with.
This past winter and the season before that,
I ran these on a few friends' vehicles,
took them up to do a whole bunch
of different offroading situations,
and I've driven them plenty of times on the street.
And I think it's probably right up there
as one of my favorite tires for all-weather conditions.
So this tire is actually classified as an all-terrain tire,
even though I think based on the tread separation
and how large the tread blocks are,
it looks more similar to a mud tire or a hybrid,
it's not quite that mud tire level.
But it does have very, very deep tread,
which unfortunately makes it a bit loud in some cases.
But I think the trade-off you get
for the amount of traction you have
makes that all worth it.
These also, like the previous few tires,
are three-peak mountain snowflake rated.
In fact, all of the tires that we're gonna talk about are,
so if you live in an area which requires that,
now you know.
So for 17-inch wheels you can actually get
35 by 12.5 inch Wrangler Duratracs,
but if you've got the 20s,
the largest size you can get is actually
a 305/55, so keep that in mind
when you're shopping for these tires.
Because a lot of times they don't make these
all-weather or these winter tires
in some of the really, really big sizes.
Because primarily I think, for the most part,
the guys that have the massive show-builds
are just gonna probably stick with the mud tires
and just rock those for the winter
and cross their fingers.
The Duratrac actually has a lot of technology
packed into it.
They include a couple of really nice features,
like they have all these little ridges
that are actually inside, I'm gonna call it
the tread wells, it's the space in between the tread blocks.
On like the flat surface of the tire,
there's actually thousands of little grooves and cuts
that add all this extra traction
when you're in the really, really deep stuff.
When that tread is completely buried,
these things are actually gonna help you
keep moving forward.
They also have a reinforced sidewall,
so you don't have to worry as much
if you're actually gonna use these
in some sort of offroad situation about
you know, blowing your sidewall out,
or sliding into a rock and pushing it off the bead.
They also do include a little extra strip
of rubber around on the sidewall
that acts as a rim-protector, too.
So there's a lot of cool things stuffed into this tire
that make it one of my favorites,
but at the same time you do pay a little bit more for it
since they are just over $1700 for the set of four.
In roughly, I think I looked at 285/55 or 295/60,
roughly that size range.
The last one on the list for me
is the Falken Wildpeak AT3W.
And this is another tire that I've spent
a ton of time driving on,
and again this is gonna be available
anywhere from the 15-inch tires,
all the way up to 20-inch.
So decent size range there but nothing too huge, again.
The largest size that they offer
is a 37 by 12.5, so if you do have a big lifted application,
you can still run these on there.
I would definitely recommend it.
And the coolest part about this tire
is actually the price point.
So for those 37s, you're only paying like $1400,
which is absolutely insane for 37s.
You're not gonna get this good of a quality tire
at that price point
for any other 37-inch tire on the market.
This one is also considered an all-terrain
but just like the Wrangler Duratrac
I think it's a bit more aggressive
than what I would classify as an all-terrain.
There's tons of siping on here,
plenty of space between the tread blocks
that you do have enough room
for water ejection, snow ejection.
Throwing out all the snow that you don't want
in the center blocks of the tire
that you do just want to keep in the siping.
This tire's actually the only tire in this list
that doesn't come pre-drilled for studs,
so if you have your heart set on running studded tires
this one's not going to be the option for you.
I personally have never ran them because in Wisconsin
they're actually illegal to run studded tires on the road,
so we don't get the opportunity to do that.
To keep the price point comparison fair,
back to the 285/55, 20 sizes,
you're actually looking at under $1200
for the set of four of these,
so I think that's pretty insane
considering the quality that you do get out of these tires.
And like I said, I've had plenty of experience
driving on these things,
and have yet to be let down by them.
So if you want to check out these four tires
or any of the other ones,
we got 'em all on the website,
we'll put all the links in the description below for you.
Otherwise you can check out customoffsets.com, peace.
(techno music)