Nothing Special

Did you hear about the punster that told ten puns to his sad friend, hoping at least one would cheer him up? No pun in ten did. Sorry, what I actually came to say was that it's time for some pictures! The first two compare one of the new BFG KO2s on the right to one of my old ProComp XTreme MTs on the left. In the first picture the KO2 looks taller, but if you look at the bottom it seems that it's just the camera angle. They look about the same in the second picture. And in this last picture there's a KO2 on the front and a XTreme MT on the rear. So not a lot of difference in appearance other the tread.

I now have a few miles on the KOs, and added video of one of them (like I did in the earlier tests) and then all four. here's a link to the tire test video with the ATs added. I can't identify any tire noise from the KO2s over the cacophony of a 53 year old truck with a soft top and no carpet, so they are a complete win there, at least so far. I remember the KO2s I had on Oswald were quiet originally and got a little louder as they wore. But I don't think there were ever loud enough that they'd have been objectionable on Pluto. Time will tell, but I'm optimistic. As I said earlier, the KO2s on Oswald always "tracked" with grooves in the pavement. They weren't terrible, but they were the worst tires I've ever had on a pickup as far as that goes, and were a big reason I switched away from BFGs on my truck (that's all I'd ever bought for a truck in my entire life until then). But Pluto needs a little herding even with my highway tires. I don't think the KO2s made him any worse. The mud tires I've run have also been fine here, so it's not like the KO2s are a big win here, but at least i didn't lose anything. They do have a bit of vibration, but I did go against my tire shops advice and had them static-balanced with weights stuck in the inside of the wheel rather than dynamic balanced with weights on the rims. But with the damage my rims get when I'm rock crawling I think it would be too common to lose a wheel weight, which would be worse than the static balance. For what it's worth, my highway tires and the ProComp mud tires also are/were static-balanced and while it took a couple tries, the mud tires were smooth and the highway tires were smooth the first time. The KM3s were dynamic balanced and were smooth the first time. So overall I'd say that in this area they carry a slight penalty over my other tires, but likely not too significant. Off-road performance is yet to be determined. I did have a set of the original BFG ATs (33x9.50-15) and one of the KOs (33x10.50-15) on Pluto before the ProComp mud tires. They were OK off road, but I think the mud tires were better. Still, I think the all terrains will be a better compromise for me. Time will tell!

That's the same crowd that we've been taking to Disney pretty much since we got the motorhome. I explained them in the first post in this thread (from one of our 2021 trips there), but Minnie and Mickey represent Lesley and me. The big and little Plutos are Kenzie and Ellie, our two dogs. Chip and Dale are our two sons, Lady and Stitch are our two daughters-in-law (and both would be offended if we switched which character went with which daughter-in-law!). And Sven and Olaf are just too cute to leave out.

Maybe a subset of category 11, "the guy who writes in his own dialect", but I'd've included the guy who types with poor spelling, no punctuation, no paragraphs and terrible grammar.

We're home now from our most recent motorhome trip only to find you all moved while we were gone! (I'm kidding, I wasn't surprised by the forum move, obviously that was well announced ahead of time, but it happened while I was radio-silent on vacation, so I'm just getting to it now.) This was yet another trip to Walt Disney World. Looking back, I went to Disney World two or three times as a kid, once with Lesley before we had kids, three times with our kids, and this was now the sixth time as empty-nesters! We (sort of) went down with some friends. We left home about the same time, but they added a stop at Mammoth Cave on the way down, so we didn't meet up with them until we were at Disney. And they hadn't taken today off work, so they got up earlier than us on Saturday and drove harder to get home in two days while we took parts of three. So we didn't travel with them, but we did spend most of the week together while we were there. This couple is actually how Lesley and I met. Dean was one of my room mates and Karin had been friends with Lesley since 2nd grade. So I met Lesley when Karin brought her to church volleyball. Anyway, after driving through Atlanta one too many times I had decided that we would never do that again. So on this trip we went through Birmingham and across southern Alabama to catch I75 in southern GA. Coming home we took I10 across the FL panhandle and then up through Birmingham, which is the route we'll do on future trips. It was interesting how close the time and distance were to the Atlanta route. Comparing to our last trip there, coming home through Atlanta was 1,593 miles in 30 hours 30 minutes. This trip home through Birmingham was 1,638 miles in 29 hours 49 minutes. With avoiding the stress of Atlanta, this is how we’ll keep doing this trip. The drive went easy. There were a lot of construction zones, but never any backups. We did have to slow down to about 35 mph for 10 – 20 miles a couple of times as we drove through the tailings of hurricane Francine on the way down, but it was just heavy rain, so not so bad overall. We did achieve a milestone of sorts on this trip. We topped 87,000 miles on the odometer, which means we’ve driven the motorhome more miles than the 42,837 it had when we bought it! Otherwise there was really no adventure, which is what you hope for in a trip like this. But here’s a picture of our camp site. And since you probably can’t read the sign in front, the top line says “welcome to our wheel estate!”

And keep in mind this is with only one of the BFGs! It was a lot louder with all 4. No. They mounted the tires on the rims yesterday afternoon, but we're getting ready to leave on a vacation (without Pluto) today. So the tires will sit in the garage until we get back. But Pluto isn't quite as "planted" and Oswald is (was?), so I expect a little wandering anyway. "A little" dissonance is fine. It can definitely add to a musical composition. But eventually it needs to be resolved! And in this case the resolution was replacing the tires.

Thanks all! This is an example of what a guy I work with calls an "allzagatta." Allzagatta do is tie the two sides together! About 4 years ago I put a set of ProComp Xtreme MT mud tires on Pluto. They've always been louder than I've wanted on the highway, but otherwise good tires. So I kept running them until I sliced two of the four in Moab this summer. I've had four sets of the original BFG Mud-Terrains (before the "KM" designation) on trucks and my Jeep before. They weren't as quiet as highway tires, but they were very easy to live with. I was hoping that 40+ years of R&D had led BFG to still have a quiet mud tire. And number of people I asked said that the KM3 was the quietest mud tire on the market. So I decided to get a set of four. I quickly realized that they are worse (in my opinion) than the ProComps for noise on my Bronco on the highway. They are probably a little quieter, but they have a two-tone noise that's really annoying (it's a tritone, "the devil's chord," for those of you who know music, or the pitches that a French police siren in a movie has). I made a video trying to capture the relative noise of the four tires I currently have for comparison. I only have one of one of them, so the test was to put three of the likely quietest tires on, and put one test tire on the left front. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucDQQtFXU6U The first tire in the test was the BFG KM3. Second was the ProComp Xtreme MTs I've been using for 'wheeling the last 4 years. Third was the Kenda Klever RT that I've had as a full size spare to go with my 33" tires. Last was that I put the fourth highway tire on. Those are Hankook Kinergy PT. (edit to add: I updated the video to include a single BFG AT KO2, and then all four KO2s) I think the video confirms my thought that the ProComp tire is the loudest, but the BFG is only slightly quieter, and with a dissonance that makes it more objectionable. Those two tires are mud tires, so it's not surprising that they would be the two loudest in the test. It's not at all surprising that the Hankook, as a highway tire, is the quietest. So it's also expected that the Kenda, as a all-terrain / mud tire hybrid is between the mud and highway tires. But it was surprising to me that the Kenda was much quieter than the mud tires, almost as quiet as the highway tire. I decided that I can't live with the BFG KM3s. I would have liked to switch to Kenda Klever RTs now, but that tire has been discontinued. I thought about going with a Kenda mud tire, hoping that they were only a little louder than the RTs. But I wasn't sure I wanted to take that risk, and BFG only wanted to give me (most of) my money back if I went with another set of BFGs. So today I got a set of BFG All-Terrain KO2s. I might have preferred the KO3, but that's not available in a 15" tire. I did have one set of KO2s before, on my pickup. I didn't love them there as they were loud for a highway tire and they "tracked" too much on pavement (pulling back and forth). But I think they'll be a good compromise for the off-road tires on my Bronco, and I think they'll be much easier to live with than the KM3s. So far I haven't put the KO2s on Pluto yet, so I don't know anything more. We're heading out on vacation, so I won't get to try them (or be on this board much) for a while. But in early October we're taking Pluto down to Missouri again, so they'll get tested out pretty soon.

I was ducked! I know, it's a Jeep thing (you wouldn't understand). But when I came out from church today these two guys were sitting on Pluto's door handle. Lesley stole them from me since Pluto isn't a Jeep (she drives a Jeep Renegade and was ducked at church earlier this summer). But it's kind of cool being accepted by the Jeepers!

From a manufacturing perspective fasteners that require turning are really expensive to install. I don't know how adhesives compare if they need to be held in place while they cure, but anything that can be pushed straight on/in is much quicker. At my company we really use no threaded fasteners.

Lol, Bradley! I'll give a try... when wife will be away, or she's gonna think I'm completely "nuts". Maybe she already does! I saw a personalized license plate that I wish I had thought of: LASTBIL. It was on a newer Chevy truck. For the few of you that don't speak Swedish that's Swedish for "truck". It fits my ideal criteria for a personalized plate, something that not everyone will get, but something that those who do will enjoy getting!

I don't have a strong feeling, but I lean toward this approach. Personally I don't care if someone joins just to ask on question. It doesn't hurt me at all, and if we can help someone just that little amount, why not? My only concern would be if a lot of "people" got on who were really just phishing. One board I was on a long time ago had to ban several new members each week who were just advertising for male enhancement products. And of course quite a few others that were there for other less obnoxious but no less valid reasons.

Yeah, I doubt seriously I will ever wear out a freshly rebuilt kingpin. It also adds value to the truck over the balljoint....maybe? Maybe. But I'd guess the difference in the truck value would be negligible, unless it was being bought to part out. I could imagine the value difference bordering on significant if you were selling just an axle, because everyone has been told that kingpin axles are best so that's what they should be looking for. Still, overall I think the differences are small enough that if it were me I'd pick whichever axle was easier to use, which is entirely a factor of what condition each is in.

I THINK the trim was low on the body up through '84, but was raised closer to the door handles briefly in '85 and then back low mid-year in '85 (I'm pretty sure about the '85 and later, but less sure about where it was in '84 and earlier). The trim is high in that picture so I'm thinking it's an early '85. I had an early '85, and when I had some bodywork done on it in about '92 those trim pieces already weren't available. The joys of a 1/2 model year part!

Early '85 from the trim line being up high like that, isn't it?

Everybody wants the kingpin Dana 60 because everybody says that's the best. If you're planning on really beating on it like a rock bouncer then I'm sure you want every bit of strength you can get. But people do say that the brakes are a significant advantage to the ball-joint Dana 60. So for most use I think that would be (slightly) the better choice. But bottom line is I don't think either are a bad choice. I'd go with whichever seemed easier. And if I was thinking about selling the one I wasn't using, I might lean toward selling the "holy grail" kingpin axle and using the one with ball joints.