Most of us wear the rubber off a set of skins in about 50,000 miles on the street, but our specialized off-road tires often only last half that long if we’re lucky. It’s not just because we flog the tar out of them, but holes in the sidewall and chunking of tread blocks can happen long before the wear indicators ever pop up. That’s why we’re glad to see a new tire from BFGoodrich, the replacement for the honored BFGoodrich Mud-Terrain T/A.
No, there’s nothing wrong with the old style. In fact we’ve been running those hallowed tires on our own rigs for ages, and never had a complaint. They are considered the benchmark of the industry, and have been around virtually unchanged for 20 years. Even with such a great design, the engineers at BFG made a host of changes to the new tire, dubbed the Mud-Terrain T/A KM, which stands for Traction Advantage, Key feature Mud.
The Mud-Terrain T/A KM looks very similar to the original design, but features an improved tread pattern with beefier lugs, Digger Lugz on the side, better shoulder void bars, and a rim protector for when running at lower pressures off-road. The actual tread elements are slightly different in size and orientation, the Digger Lugz make for a gnarly look to the tire, and they grip rocks and mud like never before. Even the side void bars are designed to allow the mud to slip off the tire by breaking the vacuum that often exists around the shoulder.
Just for you, our valuable reader, we snagged a set of these BFGs as soon as they came out of the mold. In fact, they didn’t even have a set of 37-inchers ready so we had to settle for the 35s. But that’s more of a real-world size for most of us ’wheelers, so we buckled down and put these 35-12.50x15 meats on a set of Center Line Polaris 10-inch rims, and gave them the torture test of 4-Wheel & Off-Road. In the rocks, sand, dirt, and on the highway these tires performed better than the original, which we found hard to believe.
Unfortunately, we only had limited trials in the mud from a previous trip, and of course they fared well as expected. Look for an extended tread wear, mud slogging, and performance test in the future. We figure that’s something you want to know, and we’re happy to oblige.