If you followed my build progress till this post, you might noticed that my early tires shown on my early build post was very wide, the Troopy came with 285/75/R16 from its first owner, but later on I changed them to stock size rims and tires, because with the first 285 size tires end of steering was on heaps of mechanical pressure and when rotating the wagon you could suddenly feel it under your hands that vehicle was struggling, when I changed them to the standard size tires which they are 225/95/R16 on the stock rims (Not old style split rims), driving and steering improved significantly, the entire rig just released from heaps of end point steering tensions which was because of the early fat wide tires, driving with skinny tires on Troopy definitely is much more pleasant to me, plus personally I like the original classic look of Troopies with the skinny tires too,
In other hand Troopy designed to be DURABLE vehicle and that’s why this platform is famous between fans and been driven by the skinny tires on lots of different conditions greatly, from mud to snow to the hardest trails in very remote countries and far far away from modern comforts most of the owners are happy with just skinny tires.
Very big, wide and fat tires, could potentially risk all the mechanical components to be suddenly unreliable and under heaps of extra unnecessary pressure and stresses, fat tires suddenly could reduce the longevity and durability of the designed mechanical parts, which Japanese engineers originally designed them for the skinny tires, by a simple understanding of a proper shaft size and bolt or mechanical joints design for specific size moving components, religiously you will realize that changing something such crucial to not the next size up, but upsizing it to the next two, three or four size up! could potentially put all the designed parts under a big question mark, even I see some people talking about 315/75R16 under their Troopies !?
Even Dakar rally 2024 got three troopies between their attendants which interesting point for me was their skinny tires, sand driving on the Saudi Arabia dunes obviously is big part of the Dakar rally. (These tires are 255/85/R16 Toyo Open Country)
Anyway, so I’m running skinny tires and I tested the rig with the stock rims and tires On and OFF road on a good challenging trails and river crossing etc… and Im very happy how they perform,
Basically for the purpose of my overlanding build they are spot on for me,
Riding great, much less chance of potential tire damage on the narrow rocky tracks, plus so cheap to run/replace them comparing any bigger size rims and tires, saving on diesel consumption plus saving on the total weight of x6 skinny tires (x2 Spares) is what I want, anytime a tire needed to be bought they are cheapest to buy and steel rims are the cheapest and the easiest to fix, specially if your purpose is true long-term overlanding and back country crossings, (Alloy rims not worth for this purpose at all) any of these single points will come considerably to your final decision on the tires and rim, if you have plan for long term cursing.
I painted all the stock rims to be Satin black by VHT spray paints, you can find Caliper or Wheel spray paints from this brand and I used x4 cans to spray all my x6 rims, this spray is very durable and worth to use, another option was to powder coat all rims but didn’t bother for removing tires and the spray painting was good enough for me plus durable.
The weakness of the stock Toyota tires coming on 70s is that they are not really durable tires really and they wear off pretty quick, ( Dunlop SP ROAD GRIPPER FA), but in other hand they are very cheap to find in the market, 225 is not very common between different brands, BF goodrich or cooper etc.. are not making any 225 size and I might decide to go to 235 which they have less side wall or I might decide to get the Bridgestone AT Dueler instead of Dunlop to test, for now I’m finding the Dunlop stock tires very quick and cheap in NZ market, but these will not be easy to find in some other countries.
Here is a link to handy interactive website to compare different size tires visually :
https://tiresize.com/calculator/
For example between available 255 and 235 tires you will see below difference
UPDATE:
Finally we started our Pan American trip and I got new set of tires in the USA, the BFG tires could be purchased much cheaper than New Zealand here, I knew most likely I would get KO2 from BFGoodrich and as soon as I got chance after shipping the troopy into the USA we got new set of tires with much better price here,I decided to get 235/85/R16 shown in below images and Im very happy that this size still handling my rig very good also not changed my diesel consumptions during our long-term overlanding, road noise is not much to notice at all
For the tire pressure on highways and tarmac, I run 50 Psi on front tires and 75 Psi on rear tires, this seems to give me a good comfy ride plus good fuel consumption and shape of the side wall.
MY RIG FUEL ECONOMY:
For your reference our Troopy economy is about 12Ltr per 100 kilometer, this is achievable by driving an average of 95k speed per hour also keeping your eye on a proper gear usage, I try to do not exceed 1500 to 1700 RPM and this is giving me very good fuel consumption for our long term traveling, obviously harder you go off-roading and steep hills and 4×4 usage will change this rate but as average on-road consumption, Im very happy this heavy home on wheels with all our equipment, x2 full diesel tanks and full fridge with a full 90 ltr water tank is giving me this rating for a V8 diesel engine !!
