 | Home > Maintenance & Modifications > Cooper STT or BFG KM's 265x75x16? |
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| airpusher Member Since: 04 Sep 2011 Location: South Wales Posts: 372   
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Lol probably not far off as I'm not the best negotiator. 
If I can get them similar when I need new ones I'd give them ago. They seem cheaper now than when I was looking about 12-18 months ago. 2006 Defender Double Cab- Zambezi Silver |
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21st Sep 2015 6:49am |
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| blackwolf Member Since: 03 Nov 2009 Location: South West England Posts: 17697  
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Until recently (and for about the last 150,000 miles) I ran 285/75 BFG KM2s on Boosts, but have now changed to 255/85 on ET15 Blindos. The factors which influenced the decision are as follows:- 285s can be fitted to Boosts but you will need 30mm spacers to retain some ability to go round sharp corners! 285s look great, but the wider the tyre the worse the road manners (tramlining etc) and also they will cover the outside of the vehicle in crud (I have the Gwyn Lewis mudflap mod and the vehicle still gets filthy). If you fit tyre chains to 285s you'll rip chunks off the body unless you have a suspension lift (which I don't). 285s are incompatible with the old-style FW Engineering folding winch anchors, which I use as nothing else comes close. You will never get any significant flotation from a tyre which can be fitted to a standard wheel on a fairly normal road-going vehicle (to get any flotation advantage you'd need Icelandic style tyres) so forget flotation. In the UK and most European terrain, the best solution for traction is a fairly narrow tyre which will cut through to something solid, so narrow is better than wide. If there's nothing solid, you're going to get stuck whatever tyres you have. In snow, 285s are dangerously slippery due to the snow getting trapped under them rather than expelled. There is however an advantage to clearance under the diff, and a 255/85 (which is in parctical terms the same height as a 285/75) does have a very slight height advantage over a 235/85 (17mm to be precise, so very minor, and about the same as the advantage over a 265/75). A 265/75 has no advantage whatsoever over either a 235/85 or a 255/85, and the only reason for fitting them is cosmetic. They look good and they fill the arches nicely, but they are not compatible with the FW Engineering winch anchors which is the principal reason I ruled them out (I have 265/75 KM2s on my Disco 2 - they look great and work superbly). So for me the choice was down to 235/85 or 255/85, and I opted for the latter since they are marginally taller, they look the bee's knees on the vehicle, they are compatible with the winch anchors (they are absolutely the largest section that will fit). They also mean that the speedo is spot on (it over-reads with 235s or 265s, like they all do, and is spot on with 255s or 285s). They are of course lightly more expensive than 235s, but you make your choice and you pay your money. I have a suspicion that it would still be inadvisablet to run them with tyre chains, since there is very little clearance between the tyre and the wheel-arch flare at certain articulations, but I'll face that problem if and when the time comes. The verdict after the change - the 255s make the Defender significantly more pleasant to drive on the road, and are every bit as good, and possibly marginally better, off-road (harder to judge since the 285s were worn and the 255s are not, so there is of course a huge difference). All of the comments and comparisons above relate to BFG KM2s, by the way, since there is no other tyre worth bothing with for my particular usage patterns. |
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21st Sep 2015 11:15am |
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| tasr12 Member Since: 09 Jun 2013 Location: Dorset Posts: 228  
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Having had KM2s on my last 110 and STTs on this one I actually think the STTs are quieter on road. That said it's a different vehicle so hardly an objective test that would stand up in a court of law...or something more suited to discuss this trial!
T. 2002 110 CSW TD5, Zambezi Silver 1995 110 CSW 300TDi - SOLD |
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21st Sep 2015 12:02pm |
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