Singling out a dual tire position drive axle

I’ve yet to decide if I want to mess with removing the inners or just run these 8 crap drives off till they’re dead and throw them all away plus the 4 steel wheels. Might not be worth the hassle to mess with it before then. I decided I wouldn’t do an all-position like in the picture on the drive axles though. Maybe if the truck never left Southern California or got driven in the winter that would be okay. I’d stick with the 255/70 idea but go with with the Continental HDR drive tires. Those are a little bit heavier but start with 26/32’s on the tread vs only 18 on the all position ones in the picture so they’d last longer and provide better traction. Plus that would be fun to feel the performance gain going from 8 295/75’s with 4 heavy steel inners to 4 255/70’s on the outer aluminum wheels. Probably would feel like a lot peppier truck with the huge RPM and weight difference there.

 

I don’t ever haul anything needing 8 tires. Today it’s 18,000 on the drives when I ran across the scale, but probably 1,000 of that is the 4 inner tires and steel wheels that don’t need to be there. So call it 17,000 with this full load. Each tire is good for 5500-6500 lbs in single position depending on size and load range so I’d be fine. Maybe they wouldn’t last quite as long since each tire is running closer to it’s design limit but I’d be okay with that.

 

Good points. I'll have to check out those Michelins. I saw their XZE all-positions. At least with singled positions you wouldn't have to worry about one corner not matching if something weird happened and had to replace one of them on the road and couldn't get a matching one. That is a consideration though. How bad are they about pickup up rocks? Man I hate that about these ones I have on now.

Other nice thing about this little experiment is that if it turns out they just don't last long enough or there are some other unforeseen drawbacks, I can always just go back to a standard 295/75 next time. Switching to 445/50 singles is a bigger move moneywise and probably not worth it unless the truck needed to go back to hauling heavy stuff.

 

How bad are those drives about holding onto rocks?

Its kind of funny, these don't even show up on Michelin's own website. XZE is the only one the comes up in a 255/70r22.5. However they do turn up on vendor webpages like STTC and Pete's Tire Barn. Discontinued maybe? They did just come out with that new drive tire that has the diagonal tread almost like a sports car tread pattern...

 

That’s just odd though that tire doesn’t even exist according to the Michelin website, or I knew I’d have seen it already along with the HDR Continental. Those are generally the only 2 tire brands I pay attention to lately. Cooper doesn’t seem to offer anything in that size last time I checked either.

They might be planning a further roll out of that new X-line D Grip drive tire. Currently only sell those in 295/75 or 11R and only in 22.5”

 

Yeah that's getting curiouser and curiouser isn't it. By the time I get around to doing this those might not be available any longer. But based on your recommendation however I'd definitely veer towards those instead of the HDR's.