Hey, I was just trying to keep it as short and sweet as possible like that slew of 1engineer polls a while back.


I could've said "Have you ever had a tire puncture or cut while driving in 4L on moderate trails comprised of clay or clay-loam soil and smooth rocks indigenous to the Southeastern United States, while driving on P-metric tires in a situation that would potentially not have punctured or cut a LT tire?" But that seems a bit wordy.


Tire information here and everywhere is all over the map in terms of "common knowledge" (anything less than an E-rated MT is dangerous, or KO2s are only for looks and stock is fine) so I was trying to get some data points on field experience.

Currently the poll shows a 20% rate of failure (if you can call it that) for P-metric tires off road. That's much higher than I expected as I tend to think a lot of upgrades are for the fashion statement rather than actual usefulness. In this case these flaky, unscientific statistics point to off-road-focused LT tires being a potentially solid choice.


I've been riding on my P-metric Michelin LTX AT2s this winter and loving them on the highway. I don't like riding in mud and with the short days I don't get out much. However in the summer my wife and I really enjoy taking the dog for "adventure" rides up through the NE Georgia mountains. That means light to moderate trails with lots of big gravel and rocks. I'm thinking I may want to get a set of some kind of off-road-focusedLT tire for this summer.

There's a lot of factors that go into a tire's rating and it's durability offroad. In the end it tends to be a spectrum from very good highway tire to very good offroad tire. The strongest offroad tires are bias ply. They suck on the highway. On my trail rig I have bias ply super swampers. They're great off road - and horrible on the road - very tough sidewalls.

For radial tires - the strands of fiber that run from bead to bead making up the strength of the sidewalls are radial. They all run parallel around the tire. The result is that they are inherently a lot easier to puncture than a bias ply tire. The higher load rated tires will typically have thicker sidewall rubber typically and more strands of nylon or polyester fibers. The benefit is higher pressure capability and higher load rating. For us that tends to mean a bit more sidewall protection from punctures or cuts. Being radial construction - a sharp rock will go through any of them. Nylon or polyester fibers just aren't all that resistant to sharp objects. The thicker rubber is what makes the difference primarily. The downside is that the sidewalls are thicker so low pressure means more heat buildup and faster deterioration of the sidewalls. Thick sidewalls tend to break down if used frequently at low pressure and require lower pressure for similar contact area. This also has to do with the individual tire. Some E rated tires are thicker than others. There's no reason that an E rated tire *must* have thicker sidewalls than a P-metric tire.

The biggest problem is that we're using a load rating as an indication of a tire's durability in a non-load context. Is the string longer than the rock is heavy? So there's really no direct relationship - although the higher load rating *tends* to correlate closely with sidewall rubber thickness and resistance to puncture/cuts. So there are also the tire specific stuff like kevlar in the sidewalls and/or tread areas. A kevlar/aramid reinforced sidewall is probably more puncture resistant in a p-metric than a non-kevlar tire with an E-rated load capacity. Aramid/kevlar fiber is very resistant to cuts and abrasion. Far more than nylon or polyester. Probably like in the order of 100's of times more resistant to cuts. A thin layer of aramid fabric would be better than many layers polyester. Similarly the rubber compound makes a big difference. Some rubber compounds are a lot more resistant to punctures and cuts than others.

Typically dedicated offroad tires tend to have more durable sidewalls whether they're LT rated or flotation sizes that are basically P-rated most of the time on the scale of pressure/load capacity.

And the difference between a Pmetric and C rated designation probably has more to do with the mold and rubber used than with the casing construction. Generally LT tires have non-silica tread compounds with deeper tread and P rated tires have less tread depth but use high silica rubber that's more wear resistant.

Ultimately I think the choice in what's best for each person is going to be situational. What is pretty well undisputed is that there's no reason to ever have an LT tire RATING because the 4runner cannot carry loads that would necessitate the LT tire capacity. The sidewall thickness and other things may make them worthwhile.

I was just being a bit of a jerk/ball buster..

The most ambiguous term in the poll is blow out.. Most people associate that with a sudden and catastrophic failure of the tire. I think what you were after.. was if people had experienced tire damage or loss of pressure while off-roading a P.

Then there is the obvious difference in terrain, since off-roading means so many different things to so many different people.

Finally, even within terrain, people get mixed up between well traveled established (sustainable) trails vs rough constantly changing wash outs... Difficulty of the trail does not necessarily correlate with tire damage potential (although there is some correlation) Even though a place like Moab can be very hard on tires, it can also be done on just about any tire with no issue because of the underlying terrain and how established the routes are. So an easy summer only gultch trail in CO can be 100x harder on tires than a difficult trail in Moab.

All tires will eventually see damage if you push them hard and often enough. The only one ones I have found to be bullet proof are bias plys. And I seriously doubt any sane person with a 5th gen wants to run them.

I don't think any P tire could last me more than one off-road trip unless I completely changed my entire approach and constantly worried about my sidewalls. Would be a fun exercise to try though....I've seen too many Ps let go on very mild terrain, to even consider them for overlanding.

I may have forgotten but thinking back, I have had 5 flat tires on 4 different vehicles in the last 25 years. All have been on OEM P rated tires. I have never had a flat on a LT tire.

I do believe aftermarket tires are usually better than what comes from factory and top quality P rated are decent but still I won't run less than C rated on anything that goes off highway.

Didn't vote.

Just to add a bit of real world trips - so far on the current P rated tires on my 4runner I've done Hell's revenge a number of times, poison spider mesa, white rim trail twice, fins and things, Gemini bridges, elephant hill, monument valley with a camp trailer, lots of trails you've never heard of in Montana, towed a camper all over the western USA for probably 3,000 miles. I've had one flat. I don't much like the tires themselves (Toyo AT2), but I'm not convinced p rated tires are problematic. Are they ideal for sharp rocky trails? no. But the idea that they have no business in the dirt is pretty silly.

Come on up my way. I'll change your experience.

I did some light off roading in my stock Yokohamas on my 20" rims. Did some beginner trails here by Austin and drove a few of the unmaintained roads in Big Bend. I didn't have an issue but I took it slow and drove carefully.

In Big Bend, I also stopped and helped a pickup that DID have a blowout on P rated tires. Didn't have equipment to change a flat out there either but that's another story.

Can't wait to take the new BFGs out now.

I've done top of the world (Moab) on my weak sidewall P rated coopers aired down to 25 psi and other rocky trails around Colorado aired up. Not one problem.

Well, I should have posted my P 265 70 17 Wildpeaks report here.

I find it hard to believe that there is anything in Oregon that would make a P Wildpeak flinch. Montana and Utah are not an issue. Southern AZ is the one place that gives me trouble and may ultimately force me away from P.

The confusion arises from mixing all P metric tires together. Only ATs count. Beyond that I want massive shoulder protectors.

In terms of actual plies, everyone here knows the tires with a 3-ply sidewall. More interesting is the tread situation. The tread of a SL P-metric, even the Wildpeak has 5 plies as do some LTCs like the Cooper AT3. XL P-metric like my Nitto 420S on the Subaru and some LTCs have 6 plies in the tread. My LTD KO2 had 6 plies in the tread also. LTE Toyo AT II, however, has a whopping 8 plies in the tread including 3 steel.

According to BFG, there is a direct correlation between ply number and puncture resistance. According to Falken, there is no offroad puncture resistance difference between their P and LTC even with a 10lb extra weight on the LTC (275LTC vs 265P). According to Toyo, if you run a lot of offroad terrain, the usual longevity patterns inverse and an LT has a chance to outlast a P. They actually recommended I get a commercial grade AT when I described my use, lol.

Finally, in my experience P tires need to be run at 28 psi or up except for deep soft stuff. I climbed Kamikaze in Utah with 36 psi in the rear tires (because I forgot). That won't work with an LTE. So a P wins in the convenience department as there is no airing down and up. However, an LTE at 20 will be more comfortable than a P at 30 over rough terrain, especially with capable shocks. But the relation between tire choice and suspension choice is another story.

Anyway, it is indeed silly to claim that a good P metric cannot do lots of offroad. I have about 5,500 off pavement miles on Ps in the SW and MT with one puncture (tire fault of the P but an LTC may have fared no better) and one sidewall burst (I think I caused that by airing down). These include Wildpeaks, Toyo AT II, and Geolander ATS.

Helpful poll. Apologies for the necropost. I have a 2023 TRD ORP arriving next month and I won't want to be on the stock all-season tires for long. I have spent way too much time going down the P-metric vs. LT rabbithole. I am going with A/T tires.

I think I may indeed go P-metric, and I go offroading several times a year, mostly in Utah/Colorado deserts and mountains. I do value on-road drivability, and I'm leaning away from the LT E Range club. I've seen some people claim they'll only buy E-range LTs, even on lighter vehicles like 4Runners, and claim that you'll just pop P-metrics the second the pavement ends. It's my understanding that E-range tires are mainly to support large weights, yet people often claim they're exclusively buying them in relatively light vehicles for extra offroad sidewall puncture protection. I've found a thread where a Falken rep claimed the Wildpeak had identical sidewall protection in all varieties, from SL to E. Meanwhile, in my own experience, I took my '99 4Runner on half of Hell's Revenge on P-metric all-seasons, among several other trails, with no result. As far as my own uses, moderately rocky trails can happen, I err on the side of slow and careful, I avoid tree roots and other dangers, and in 11 on-and-off years I have never had an offroad tire failure, regardless of tire type. If I recall correctly, the TRD PRO model even comes on P-metric tires.

Load Range C LTs almost started looking like a solid middle ground (on the few A/T tires that offer them in factory size). Someone pointed out that BFG KO2's in Load C are load index 112--which is actually lower than the load index 113 A/S's the 4Runner comes on.

Wildpeak AT3W's, Open Country ATIII's, and the venerable KO2 seem like the best options available to me. Some offered P-metric SL, some LT Load C's, all offered in an LT Load E as well.

Given how many 5th gens are sold and offroaded, I feel like I'm the 100,000th person to have gone down this path of excessive research and overthinking!

For me, someone would have to prove that whatever popped their P-rated tire offroad wouldn't pop an E. Yes, I get the sidewalls are much thicker in an E tire. I'm not debating they aren't stronger. However, I went up one tire size to a 285/70 4-Ply Maxxis AT that ways only 44lbs and noticed a difference in overall power, huge difference in power towing my trailer up hills, and MPG loss. I have a set of 285/70 BFG KM3s that I got for free just sitting in my garage and have zero interest in running them because they are an E that weighs 70lbs a piece. I ran a C-load KO2 before the Maxxis and the difference in ride was very noticeable (for the better) with the lighter load Maxxis. Not to mention the cost difference. An E is not worth it for a mostly road vehicle that wheels even a handful of times a year, IMO.

But hey, that's just me.

I currently use E rated Falken Wildpeak AT3Ws. Although not an everyday need/requirement, I have done a handful of trails in AZ & Death Valley to see how nasty some of the trails can get. We did Outlaw Trail (AZ) and the Escape Trail, Goler Wash and Mengel Pass in DV at the end of Jan 2023. I was really taken aback with how sharp the rocks were in DV. A lot of it was created by the floods late last year. I sure was glad I had ponied up for the E rated.

However, no matter what type of tires you get, I would always have a plug kit and a sidewall patch kit if you go off road. Something like this:
4x4 Kit
– GlueTread
and
Tire Accessories | ARB 4x4 Accessories
^you have to scroll down to see the tire repair kit.

And of course a good tire inflator. (Viair or ARB etc).

I'm running KO2 C rated on the 4runner and supposedly crappy P rated Bridgestone Dueler HT on my Land Cruiser. No issues with either but the P rated tires seem to have better road manners and ride quality given the lower inflation pressures for general road use. Off road, no issues with either. I tend to think the driving style and ultimately the vehicle drive systems have the biggest impact on performance unless you are mud bogging or hardcore rock climbing. Definately had more flats on road tread tires vs AT tread tires.

I have been running SL 285/70-17 AT3 Wildpeaks for the last 2+ years with about 500 miles of off road and 4wheeling without issue. They weigh 50#’s each. A little heavier than the SL Toyo’s at 47 and the Maxxis at 44.
As was previously stated, a good tire repair kit, compressor, fix-a-flat, etc. is important. E rated for extreme terrain and weight.
I think the most important item related to a flat tire is carrying a good full size matching spare tire.

No, no blowout(s) on my '18 SR5. The first off road drive I took, about a month after I bought the truck, I sliced the sidewall of the front passenger side OEM tire a bit on a hidden rock as I was returning to a maintained dirt road. About 3" or so across, deep enough to show the inner layers. Drove the 100+ miles home. No air loss. Had it swapped out for the spare the following day. Two weeks later I had a new set of BFG All Terrain T/A KO2 Load Range E spooned on, which are still on the truck.