My ride is a road queen and I listened to this forum and recently purchase the Michelin Defenders to replace my Coopers. Man, the car ride is noticeably smoother.


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what coopers did you have and what size? Just curious because at the moment I have the cooper discoverer srx 265/65r17. they have been great tires for the past 85k miles. looking to replace them soon. I was actually looking at the kumho crugen ht51 as it has gotten outstanding reviews and within my budget. Maybe I will take a look at the michelins as all my driving is highway and ride comfort is very important as well as good traction in snow.

michelins are great tires but more expensive than other top rated brands. heres a chart based on consumer reviews that shows the kumho crudgen are top rated & a lot cheaper than michelin. the general grabber is a good budget tire too. this is for true highway truck/suv tires, not the a/t type.

https://www.tirerack.com/tires/surve...earDiameter=17

as for the ride & bilsteins, bilsteins are much firmer than stock shocks & for ride comfort & street only use, many people say they are harsh compared to stock. if you want a softer ride feel, consider the KYB shocks/springs, they are a little firmer than stock but nowhere near as much as bilsteins. i just installed a set on my 08 4runner & they ride great with no harshness or overly firm feel.

I've had two different sets of Michelin LTX MS2's crack. My 3rd gen set, which I bought new and cracked all to hell after 6 months. And my 4th gen set which looked like garbage after a year.

Michelin couldn't pay me enough to put their shit tires on my truck.

1 year old tires looked like they were 50 years old. Michelin's response via their warranty representative shops was "cracks aren't big enough". Even when they were big enough (on one of the sets) they gave me a pittance for them... on another set of michelins.

Since alot of people say great things about the LTX, my experience is a rarity it seems. But two in a row was something that I felt real burned by. And Michelin did everything they could to demonstrate that they didn't give a shit. They didn't lift a finger to help me out or show that they give a crap about their product or just this one customer.

So f*ck them and their overrated, overpriced tires.

Honestly though I am glad to see that my experience is rare and an exception.

Well, the Michelin LTX MS2 has since been discontinued so its not like you can even get another set of those.

The replacement Defenders are excellent.

That said, I have a set of LTX MS2 that I don't use anymore due to age, probably about 10 years old.

I do have a little cracking, at the bottom of the lugs, but no where as bad as other brands I have owned. Nitto that I have on another truck have cracked and degraded way more than this photo.

Having put this tire though its paces, none of it has effected quality or performance.



Any missing chunks from the tread are due to abuse in an application it wasn't even designed for.

Still, its the best road tire I have ever owned. Defenders I would buy without hesitation.

I had the Discoverer HTP 265/65. R17. They were good. The ride was a little more harsh then the Michelin but they lasted 55k.


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I have a Michelin I used for 9 years. There was still thread left on it. I had to replace it with the cheapest I could find, Fuzion SUV. It's quite a good tire too. This is my sixth year for that tire and I'm quite happy about it. I'm getting another cheap tire this year. In my opinion, you should get a tire based on your mileage a year. A 60000 mile tire can last me 5-6 years. I like replacing tires on that time frame for safety purposes.

just an fyi: fuzion suv has to be the one of if not the worst tire out there! no offense to you personally & im glad you like them, but do a search on them, they have terrible reviews & many have dangerous issue with them like sidewall bulge & slipped belts etc.

when i bought my 4runner it had these tires on it & they rode like complete crap! granted they were less than half tread but that doesnt justify how poor they rode. yes they are cheap priced, but also cheap quality & made in china!

https://www.tirerack.com/tires/tires...&tireModel=SUV

I can't agree more. Driven many vehicles with Fuzions in the past (GFs car, her parents, friends cars). All of them rode awful. I would never recommend that brand.

to explain what i meant by "complete crap"... these are an all season highway tire & they were very loud, much louder than a true A/T tire i replaced them with.

they gave a strange uneasy feeling on a smooth straight road, so much so i thought the suspension was shot. wouldnt hold a straight line & wondered for no reason. replaced with some goodyear a/t tires & didnt change anything else & the car rode excellent.

& they are a very hard tire, on wet roads they were very slippery & would spin on easy take offs & slide on slow corners. in light snow they were downright dangerous with horrible braking. & after only 4 years of age they had lots of cracking between the treads.

yes they are a cheap priced tire & may be ok for the 1st half of their life, but id rather spend even $10-20 more for a name brand tire that gets better ratings. just my .02

This has nothing to do with Fuzion or the 4Runner, but it reminds me of a time when I want too budget on my sedan.

Money was a bit tight and my car needed new tires. Went with the Discount Tires house brand, Road Hugger, and it was literally one of the worst experiences I ever had with a tire. The worst part is that I had to keep them for 38k miles.

They didn’t inspire any confidence when driving, sidewalls felt so weak in the knees, numbed handling and response. It was noisy and at times just loud. Traction was poor in wet conditions as well. It only got worse with age as tire thread reduced. Replaced with the Michelin Pilot Sport A/S 3 Plus and it was night and day.

$100-200 difference at the time of purchase might seem like a lot, but when you take into considering how many miles they are in service and how much work a tire does, the cost difference is nominal. Even if the price difference was $200, the cost difference is $0.005 per mile for all 4 tires across its service life.

When you take into consideration the safety and performance gains, how can one afford not to buy a good tire. It’s the only thing keeping you in contact with the road.

I'm wondering if Defenders would be a good choice for how my 4Runner is used.

My wife uses it as a DD, so it mostly stays in town or is driven an hour away to other cities. But we also use it for camping and hiking trips. We don't go anywhere too crazy, the roads are usually gravel at least and can be a little rough. To throw another wrench in, we also visit the mountains that are nearby several times a year and that can involve driving in snow/slush.

I want a good highway tire because we are mostly driving on pavement, but I don't want to have to buy another set of tires/wheels for our other trips. What do you guys think?

Michelin Defender LTX M/S Tire Review >> AutoGuide.com News

Tire Review - Michelin Defenders Go On Road and Off

When it was new, didn't notice the loud sound. I guess as the tire ages, it gets noisier which is what's happening now. I rotate the tires every 10000 miles. now, i'm not rotating it anymore since i'm due to replace it this summer. During acceleration on wet road, i hear the tire spin especially if i'm not in 4 wheel drive. I had to put it in 4x4 to get more traction when it's raining. I've never experienced the uneasy feeling though after I replaced my front strut and spring and lower control arm, it drives straight even on uneven part of the road now. My front suspension was shot and they could not align it due to the frozen bolts.

the Fuzion SUV tire is quite expensive now. Maybe I got lucky it doesn't have any bulge in it or defect. I wanted to get the expensive one but not good financially for me. I have other projects I need to do with the truck like replacing the exhaust and removing the rust and painting it the part of the frame I could reach expecially the rear part, wil require an exhaust removal which is impossible without cutting it into pieces. I've done the front part already when I did the front suspension so rust is not as bad in the front.

anyway, that's my story. lol!

you can just get the all season tire. if you are not offroading extremely, that works pretty well. i've used my all season tire in the beach, the cheap Fuzion one. never got stuck. of course you have to lower the tire pressure to 13psi.