| Test Summary | |
| Dry Braking |
Goodyear Wrangler MT R |
| Wet Handling |
Yokohama Geolandar MT |
| Dry Handling |
Goodyear Wrangler MT R BFGoodrich Mud Terrain TA KM2 Achilles Desert Hawk XMT General Grabber MT Hankook Dynapro MT Dunlop Grandtrek MT2 Bridgestone Dueler MT |
| Ice Handling |
BFGoodrich Mud Terrain TA KM2 |
It takes ten mud terrain (M/T) tyres in 265/75 R16, sticks them on a 4x4 Ford Ranger pickup truck, and puts them through wet, gravel, rock and endurance tests to find out which tyre will be the most useful for hardcore off road use.
The Tests
In order to test the tyres in their most common conditions, the magazine chose to focus on off road performance. Instead of testing dry and wet road performance, only wet braking and wet handling were tested, as the variance in dry performance was small.
The off road tests were far more thorough. The Ford Ranger was put through braking tests on gravel, traction on rocky surfaces and traction in mud, and the tyre was even tested on a rig to see how strong the sidewalls are.
Wet
Braking down from 50 mph on wet roads proved close, with the gap between the best and worst on test just 4.9 meters. The Dunlop narrowly beat the Hankook to first place, with the Goodyear finishing third.
Under wet handling tests the Goodyear moved to the top spot, with Hankook holding second place. The wet braking winning Dunlop, could only manage fifth place, with Bridgestone rounding out the top three.
Gravel
For the gravel braking test, again from 50 mph, the pressure was reduced from 2.4 bar to 1.8 bar. This time the Hankook was the winning tyre, with the BF Goodrich and Goodyear rounding out the top three.
Rock Traction
For rock traction, the tyres had to get the Ford up a solid 30 degree incline. The magazine attempted three runs, one at 1.8 bar, then at 2 bar, then 2.2 bar and finally 2.4 bar. As the tyre pressure increases, the ability on rock decreases, and top marks are awarded for the tyres which can make it up at every pressure.
Seven of the ten tyres made it up at the full 2.4 bar. Yokohama finished eighth, managing the 2.2 bar run but failing at 2.4 bar, Kumho finish ninth and failed at 2.2 bar, and Nankang finished in last place, failing to make it up at 1.8 bar.
Sidewall Strength
With punctures a very real part of offroading, and usually a major inconvenience, the magazine tested each tyre at 2.4 bar with a special machine that measures how much pressure is needed to puncture the shoulder area, between the tread and the sidewall.
The three ply sidewall tyres (BF Goodrich, Achilles, Nankang and Goodyear) tyres generally did better than the 2 layer tyres, though Kumho and Yokohama scored well for a twin ply construction.
Mud Traction
The mud test proved to be a real problem for the magazine, and even though they knew repeatability of the test would be an issue, they didn't realise just how hard it would be!
In the end, even using a specialist mud bath, the testers couldn't get any meaningful data from driving the truck in and out of the mud area, so decided to omit the results from the test.
Results
