Didn't want to post a 'done to death' tire thread but...

I have a 3.5 liter H3 and have been running DuraTrac 285/75/16's which I love, especially for the Colorado snow season. Was considering going to 305/70R16's to fill the arches out a little more but it looks like they have been discontinued, so the only remaining DuraTrac option would be the 315/75R16's - anyone have any opinions? Too taxing on the rig / noisy / rubbing etc etc.

Thanks in advance.

 

Great question, im in same boat as you dukie. cant wait to see what others think. i would love to upgrade my tires.

 

I have a 2007 (3.7L) with all the performance mods, and run MTZ 305s. Look at the Cooper & Mickey Thompson tires.

Personally, I would not bother with 315s (35s) with an I5, knocks the chit out of MPG and butt dyno. Sure they look great, but how many miles are you going to wheel, and when you do, do you really think 7/16" of additional ground clearance is going to mean something?

 

Looks like I'll have to stick with the 285's, I have to have tires which will be good in the ice / snow - the DuraTrac 315's might sap a bit too much power for the mountain passes and the Duratrac 305's are unobtanium / discontinued.

 

We've (gf & I) both 265 75 16.
285 drains the 3.5l & the 3.7l just barely is adequate.

 

Ooops, just realized I typed 3.5L in the header, mine is a 2007 - 3.7L.

 

I just went from 285/70/R16 Cooper Discovery to 315/70/R16 BF Goodrich AT's on my 07 H3 and I was surprised that there realy was no big change on MPG. The biggest changed is now I drive 60 while my GPS shows 65 and if I take her up to 65 i'll be doing about 72.

one has to take account for the OD change and calculate those changes to correlate with the actual mileage driven on the new tires. In my case the rate of change is about 1.17.

 

Guapo, the change in mileage from a 285 (32.8) to a 315 (34.6") tire is 1.06 to 1.075.
It should be calculated by revolutions per mile of each tire.

We have only owned 1 I5 and it was a 5 speed manual so there was no real loss in power due to the fact you change gears when you want not when the TCM tells your automatic transmission to shift.