A couple of weeks ago I bought new wheels and tires for Stephanie’s jeep. (Thanks to a contribution from Stephanie’s father making it all possible.) My original plan was to buy some black steel Rock Crawler style wheels and BFG All Terrain T/A Revo tires. Things did not go quite like that, but I am pretty happy with how things turned out.
I ended up buying everything from Discount Tire because they are about 5 minutes walk from my house, have a good selection, and when I was pricing things online had very good prices. One afternoon I take the jeep, rust old steel wheels and all, there and go in to execute my plan.
First problem is that they don’t have the rock crawler style wheels ($56) in stock. The guy at the counter offers thier base alloy wheels, normally ~$86 for $70 a wheel. That price will work for me. Stephanie wanted shinier wheels than the black ones anyways.
So, I have him give me a total including the BFG All Terrain T/A Revo tires and all work. $950. Ouch. Okay, that isn’t going to work for me. I ask what else he has in a nice tire that will be fine on the street and great in the nasty snowy winter conditions I subject the jeep to. He goes and grabs one of the other guys who drives a wrangler for ideas.
That guy suggests the Yokohama Geolander (*bunch of letters*). That is what he uses and says they are great in the winter and acceptable the rest of the year. They requote me and come back at $850 for the wheels, tires, installation, and thier warrenty. Close. I haggle a bit more, and the guy comes down to $800 all included. That works.
After driving the jeep through a winter storm and just day to day, these tires are a huge improvement over the Goodyear Wrangler RT/S that were on there before. They are smooth and (relatively) quiet on the high way, and performed great on snow and ice. I was able to drive around quite a bit before having to put on the 4wd during the storm. On the old tires I had to put it in 4wd to get out of our drive way. After the fact I checked on TireRack, and these tires are actually rated very highly.
