Transcription
Hey guys, Chase, welcome back to the channel. Today we are going to be talking about tires, specifically for Subarus. So I recently wore out my previous set of tires and needed to replace them. And so I went through the process of trying to navigate, you know, all the different options that are out there, come up with the best option for what I need and what I do, and I'm happy with what I chose. And so today we're just going to talk about that process and talk about the considerations that need to be kept in mind, and when it comes to picking tires specifically for vehicles like all-wheel-drive Subarus and off-road travel, on-road travel, all that stuff.
And I do have quite a bit of experience with this, but I have a buddy with a lot more experience than I. Um, his name is Nate, and I actually called him up before I made my final decision on the setup that I went with, just to get his two cents. He's probably blown more sets of tires than I've ever even used in my life. And so I'm actually gonna cruise by his house here in a bit and get his input on the topic. So hopefully this helps you guys in your navigation of tire options. Before we go do that, I'm gonna go cruise around the desert for a bit. [Music]
All right, that was a blast. I'm gonna cruise over to Nate's house now, and we are going to chat about tires. Hey guys, here we are with Nathan Mueller, my buddy that I mentioned earlier. He's got a YouTube channel talking all about overlanding and gear, and he is much more experienced with all that stuff than I am. And so I've got a bunch of questions that people have asked. I posted earlier asking what the questions that a lot of people have when it comes to choosing tires are, and so we've got a list here. We're just going to kind of run through them, and I'm going to present the question; Nate's going to give all the facts on how we should navigate that process. And uh, before we get going, I was just talking to him; if you want the down and dirty, like on all things geeky tire stuff, he has a video that goes deep on that, and so you can head over there. Today we're gonna be talking specifically about the Subaru and the all-wheel-drive system and how the choices that you can make will affect that and the performance when you're out. And then we'll also talk a little bit about how to increase that performance when you are doing different types of activities and then increase the longevity of the tire over the long term.
So the first thing, and I think the most common question, is how does changing your tire and wheel size affect the ride of the vehicle? And so the most common direction of that is most people are thinking about going smaller with their wheel size and the same with their tire or larger with their tire in order to gain more ground clearance or just a more comfortable ride. So yeah, if you're gonna actually change out your—I was—I'm old; I still call them rims; that's like a 90s thing, I think—but if you're going to change out your wheels, um, you know, a lot of people are changing them out and blacking out their rims or something like that. If you're going to do that and you're going to be overlanding in a Subaru, if you're going to be out on dirt roads, you should—it's always good to aim for the smallest size rim that you can fit over your brakes clearly. So different models are going to be different. In the truck world where I am, the smallest I can get is 17s, so I take all of mine down to 17 to have more rubber. The more rubber you have, I always say, more rubber, more better. But the biggest deal where that's going to come in on a lot of roads, you know, the suspension on a Subaru is really nice, so you're probably not airing down your tires on most roads. If you're on a road that's really bumpy and you have a ton of like washboard and stuff, you might want to air down to like 20 psi if you have something to air back up before you get on the, you know, get on the road again. And that will smooth things out; it'll cause a lot less wear and tear on your vehicle. But the bigger thing is it'll give you a much better grip. So and I was telling you this, like there's people that have literally died where they got stuck in snow and tried to hike out to save themselves, froze to death, and then they literally go to rescue their car, and you've got like the local cops, the sheriff show up; they literally just let air—20 psi out of their tires—and they just drive the car out; it's not even actually stuck. So airing down is a big deal. The more rubber that you have, so the smaller your wheel, the more tire that you have, the more you can air down and the bigger footprint that will give, and it'll give you more traction. So it's almost like in your guys' world, it's maybe just a worst-case scenario to have a smaller rim and have more rubber and be able to air down when you get stuck, right? But yeah, it's definitely an advantage for sure that's worth having, right? If you're—they're gonna change the rim anyway. Cool.
And then increasing the actual tire size, so the overall height of the tire itself, um, and how—yeah, I guess how does that affect the performance, the ride, and then also the vehicle itself? Yeah, I mean, if you're shrinking your wheel size and then you're increasing the tire size, so it's the exact same diameter, I mean, you're just going to see a benefit of having more squish from having more rubber. Uh, if you're increasing the tire size over the stock vehicle size, that's a whole host of other things because then you can introduce like rubbing issues and clearances, so that's—that's more in the world of like lifts and all that kind of stuff, right? And if you start going—a lot of people think that you have to go with a bigger tire in order to go out and adventure more, but in reality, that can just—that can take away a lot from the vehicle's capabilities itself, right? Yeah, yeah. If you wreck your travel and your tires rubbing—I have this problem all the time—people keep upgrading their truck tires, the huge ones, and then the tire rubs, and they don't understand that that's a bigger liability than having a smaller tire on a trail. The other thing is seat time—a lot of times matters more than anything—which is just learn to drive your vehicle, learn where your wheels are, and learn wheel placement, and you can get through a lot of trails with small tires. So don't kill your clearance. I've seen people rip their fenders off and send them flying like 20 feet in the air because their tires rub—really, you know, they smash it on a bump that they weren't expecting. So whatever you do, don't ups—don't go to a big enough tire where—where you have rub; it's not worth it ever, right? And you gain such a minimal amount of actual clearance—yeah, in the belly—by going up that for the most part, in my opinion at least with most vehicles, leaving it stock size and just learning how to navigate is going to be the best—best bet as far as tire size goes, right? Yep, absolutely. Cool.
Next question is all-season versus all-terrain tires. All-season tires, from my experience, usually just look like straight-up street tires, but they have a little bit softer compound, or they just have a style that is better at handling water and ice and snow in the winter, but they aren't very aggressive tires. That's what I've actually run for the last couple of years on my car, just because that's what I started with, and—and I abused the crap out of them and had really good luck. Um, unfortunately, they wore out pretty much really—maybe it was my fault—but I just switched over to my new set. So a lot of people ask when, you know, going with a more aggressive style, do you want an MT or an AT—MT being mud terrain, AT being all-terrain—and where would be the usefulness on that? My opinion with a Subaru, I don't know if there's ever really a good time to have an MT or reason to; they're just not built for mud. And so all-terrains are kind of the ones that we want to look to, and you can probably—better—yeah, why? I mean, first of all, mud terrains are heavier, so you are going to see a decrease in power on your vehicle because I was just telling you about this too—with rotational weight—the weight of your rim plus your tire, it doesn't count against you if you add 10 pounds of weight there; it doesn't count against you for 10 pounds because your engine is actually having to turn that. So if you stick, let's say a rooftop tent that weighs 90 pounds, it counts against you for 90 pounds; you stick 10 extra pounds on your tire, it counts against you for 40 pounds, right? So the weight that you add on your tires counts against you a lot more on the pa—like on how it transfers to the power of your vehicle and everything like that. So if you're going to go with mud terrains, first of all, mud terrains are just heavier than all terrains significantly and definitely like all-weather tires, right? So you're going to lose a lot of power by doing that. A lot of people are doing it just because they think that they look cool, but the reality is, I mean, a mud-terrain tire is made really for rock crawling, you know what I mean? You probably aren't going to be doing much rock crawling in a Subaru. I mean, some people do some crazy builds, but you're—most people are not going to be doing that. So I mean, I own trucks that do rock crawling, and they do rock crawling that people actually consider pretty extreme; I don't, but they've done all of the crazy Moab trails and some of the hard-rated trails there, and those trucks are all running all-terrain tires. And the reason is they're lighter, they're less noisy, you get better gas mileage, and they're—they're fine at handling that. So I am not a fan of mud terrains unless you're gonna get into crazy circumstances where you need that, which you shouldn't be in a Subaru. The only other time is like—yeah, if I was gonna do an expedition to the bottom of South America, I'd run mud terrains; I would get terrible miles out of them, but they're going to have stronger sidewalls, so like in Baja, it's kind of nice for the cactuses and stuff like that. But yeah, on a Subaru, I don't think you should be going any more aggressive than an all-terrain tire.
With all seasons, the thing that you're going to notice is those—do they—do in fact do better in the snow and—well, not specifically snow—ice, right? Ice is where they actually do better, and it's because they have a lot more siping; they do really great. The problem is they do really terrible in mud; they do really terrible in sand. So if you are going to be going out on even just forest service roads, if you go on a forest service road and get caught in an unsuspecting, you know, rainstorm, all terrains are probably going to be pretty handy. The other thing that I would tell people is if you live in a part of the country where you are absolutely terrified of snow and ice and you're trying to get—like mud terrains—terrible in snow um and ice, and they frankly don't do well in rain either, so they're kind of a wash. Uh, the all terrains do—if you get a snow-rated all-terrain, like a triple peak—what do they call it—the snowflakes—yeah, exactly. You get—if you get a snow-rated all-terrain, you can do pretty well—not quite as good as like the passenger tire all-weather one—but the reality is if you're going to get into that world, just buy a cheap set of steel rims and get a studded set of tires. If that's your ultimate fear is ice, get studded tires; they'll last you like 10 seasons because you only drive them three months out of the year. That's what we do with my wife's Subaru; I've studied tires for the winter, and the rest of the year you run—we run all-weather tires. Yeah, and I think so—going back—um, when he was mentioning the—the weight on the tires themselves, so he explained to me earlier in a way that I hadn't realized. So 10 pounds per tire increase because you're on with a more aggressive tire means you've got 40 pounds between all four of the tires, and then there's actually a three-to-one factor as far as the relation to the actual loading of the car versus just the weight. And so with, you know, the rooftop tent, you know, might be 90 pounds, but if you put 10 pounds on each tire—40 pounds—and then that three-to-one factor, so it's multiplied by three, and so you've got essentially the—the equivalent of 120 pounds on your roof or inside your car. And so your gas mileage can just tank, and the—the drivetrain is just going to tank too because it's eating that up. So for me—people want to call you out on technicalities—yes, we all know it's not exactly three to one because it depends exactly on your wheel diameter and everything, but like a good general rule of thumb is rotational weight counts against you at about three to one. Yeah, it's—it's more than just the weight of the tire, right? It's greater than that. And so for me, um, I got some all terrains, and they're slightly heavier than my uh previous set, but overall, so far with the testing that I've done the last week, they've been incredible with—yeah—and dirt and all that stuff. For me, most the time I'm using my car to get me to a place to do a thing, not to go to the place to, you know, drive around and get crazy. Um, there's anything wrong with that, but um, anyway, so it's more of getting me to the destination, and so three-quarters of the time it's usually on pavement commuting, um, and then a bit of time getting out there to the trail and then heading out. Okay.
And so then the other question that a lot of people have when it comes to deciding between the different options is the effect that it'll have on street performance and street noise when you're driving at higher speeds. I've noticed that with my new set of ATs, they're actually not much louder than my previous set of all seasons and the—the stock set that came with it originally. But for the most part, the more aggressive the tire, the louder it's going to be, and the more annoying it's going to be while you're driving. I mean, you're definitely going to notice if you get mud terrains; it will be loud, right? They will definitely be loud, and you—even if they're perfectly balanced—you might notice that certain speeds they cause a little bit of vibrations and stuff that you aren't used to, and that's pretty normal with mud terrains; it's just kind of how they work. Yeah, yeah. That's the same with the—the more aggressive the tire, the more challenging they can be to balance and keep—keep right, you know. Once you get them right, and so just another reason to say stay in the more stock zone and the all-terrain, all-season space for ease of use and—and longevity there. So now let's talk about performance and longevity; how we can just increase both of those with whatever tires we're using, whether they're all terrains or all seasons. Um, you mentioned in snow, we dropped the tire pressure; same thing in sand, drop the tire pressure. Any soft thing that we're driving through, increasing that surface area increases—yeah, it's going to increase the performance of the tire for sure; you're just gonna have a lot better traction with sand; you're not gonna sink in nearly as much. So that—like airing down is a big deal; it's not just in trucks—like even in cars—a lot of people don't do it because it takes—you know, if you're going around and letting air out of each tire one at a time, it takes a while, and then you're going to need a little compressor to plug in and air them back up, so it's a little bit of a pain in the butt. But it—not only will help your tires and your traction—it will help your actual car. Like going on a washboard for 25 miles is not very good for your car—just constantly being jiggled to death. Take—you know, if you're—that—if you take your tires down to—on washboard road—I'll be running my tires at about 18 to 20 psi. Just that alone will almost smooth all that washboard out, so it's a lot less abuse on your vehicle. And with the rocks, when you're driving, if—if there's any sizable rocks that are going to be rotating, I've sliced a few sets of tires or a few tires from a rock rotating under the tire and it just, you know, cutting it. And so increasing that surface area prevents the—the amount of rotation of stuff under the tire and just the—the chance of slippage of the tire. And so you can actually just overall lessen the likelihood of a puncture or a laceration on the tire itself. I think that—I mean, obviously the other one with longevity, if you're somebody that's going to do a lot of—I'm calling it off-roading, but we're just talking even just bumpy dirt roads on a regular basis—if you're not rotating your tires—whatever they tell you to do—do less. And everybody's like, oh, that's awful, but like on my truck, if I want to get the full mileage out of a set of tires, I got to rotate my tires like out every 5,000 miles. How often do I actually do it? Probably about every 7,000, but I try to do it every 5,000, and the reason is if I actually want to hit the mileage warranty with the amount of time that they spend on the dirt, like you've gotta rotate constantly. Yeah, so yeah, be uh—pay attention to tire rotations, otherwise you're never gonna get your mileage. Uh, pay attention to having it inflated back up to the right pressure when you do get on the highway because otherwise you're gonna end up with uneven wear. Right to the gas station or something, keep a little gauge with you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that touches on kind of increasing the longevity. Now the big question that I've had over and over and over is what tires do I use? And so I mentioned earlier, I just got a new set, and it was partially driven by his opinions on this, and I'd call them up kind of after I'd done a little bit of research, and I ended up going with one of the most popular tires on the market for Subarus—the uh Wildpeak Trails—and that was based on—on his suggestion. So I've only had them for about a week; I've put a couple hundred miles on them so far, and I was up in the snow; I went skiing last weekend in a bunch of mud, snow, and then today went out in the desert, went around on some rocks, a little bit of hill climb activity and stuff, and so they've been doing really well overall. They've seemed very similar to my previous all seasons as far as on-road performance goes, with the exception of on the freeway; they wander just a slight bit more. The noise is not bad at all; I don't—don't really notice any difference. And then off-road, they've been awesome, and as you guys can see in the uh—the footage—but I've only put a few hundred miles on them so far, so long term, we'll see where they go. Um, so that's—that's what I've got, and I like them.
One other question that people have had is other—other tools or pieces of equipment to bring along—patch kits, whatever—what are your recommendations on things to bring? Anybody that's going to go on a dirt road should know how to patch a tire with a plug kit, all right? Especially for us—most of us only have a, you know, little donut—donut's fair—not a full size. I did a video that was 45 seconds long that showed how to patch—how to plug a tire; it's really easy. If you've never done it before, you're super intimidated and you have no idea what you're doing, and then when you finally see somebody do it in real life in front of you, you're like, what? That's how easy this is; why haven't I been paying people to do this? It's that easy; it's really hard to screw up. So you should learn—you should get a plug tire kit; you should put a link to one—they—they're super cheap—that's the other thing. You can get a plug kit for your vehicle for about 20 bucks. ARB has one; ORC has one—that—I mean, on Amazon, there's probably 20 different kits for less than 20 bucks. Get that; learn how to patch it. If you've got any old tires laying around, just stick a nail through it, pull it out, and then practice patching it—super easy. That—we—I've been—I've done Baja trips in my truck where we got—on one trip, we had six flat tires—not just my truck—between the whole party, and I ended up being the only person that had a patch kit, and they're holes from cactus spines, so it's easy to plug those and patch them. If we had not had that patch kit, we would have not had enough tires to get out; we'd had to leave a vehicle behind. And for us with Subarus, having that donut—those things are not designed to get you out of the places that you're going into to blow your tire—like they just—they have speed limitations; they have lower, you know, your vehicle have lower clearance; it just won't work, right? And so that's—that's a—that's a good tip. A lot of people have asked me with my camper setup, like how are you going to get the spare tire? Um, I've gotten super lucky; I haven't blown a single tire in my Subaru, but if it happens, I literally just replaced my tires on my truck; there wasn't a single tire left on the truck that did not have a plug in it. Nice. I do drive on some stupid stuff though, but um—wait, I was going to say one other thing—you have the Falken Wildpeaks. One thing with brands on tires—I'm not sponsored by any tire brands or anything like that—there are—you should do your research because, for example, Falken Wildpeaks right now are getting their reputation as the AT tire that's kind of best in the snow. Like if you're not going to do the studded tire thing for the winter, Falken Wildpeaks perform really good in snow—like hands down—they definitely perform better than like the BFGoodrich KO2s, which—you guys don't know me—but me saying that's a lot—I run KO2s for 20 years and swore by them, but they really don't perform that well on snow and ice. The Falken Wildpeaks are way better than that. The other thing about them is they've kind of upped their tire game in the last five years, I guess, so like Falken is actually winning—like Baja 1000—now like BFGoodrich owned the Baja 1000 for 50 years, and they still kind of do, but like when other brands are winning now, it's Falken's starting to show up a lot actually, so their tires are getting a reputation as being really tough and being able to handle some pretty extreme stuff. So I'm a big fan of theirs, but the other one we were talking about that also is kind of like—they've been around for a long time, but a newcomer as far as getting an AT out there on all the different sizes, so they're becoming more well-done is the Yokohamas and the Yokohama Geolandar. I'm—I'm testing those right now in my truck, um, and I've been really impressed with those as well. So yeah, there's a lot of good brands out there, but like Cooper makes a really good AT tire as well that's popular on Subarus, but like the Cooper, the Falken, the BFGoodrich's, the Yokohamas—you can't really go wrong with any of those AT tires. But if you don't live someplace where there's snow, maybe the Wildpeaks really aren't that big of an advantage for you; maybe you should go with like a BFGoodrich or a Yokohama, you know what I mean? Yeah, but if you're in some place where there's snow, do your research; the—the chatter on the Falken Wildpeaks is no joke when it comes to how good they do in snow. All right. Okay, I have a series of questions—unplanned—didn't give you time to prep. If somebody drives 99% on the street and then goes out to a trailhead on gravel, washboardy road, what type of tire should they get? You know, if your brand—if you want the longest performance and the best bang for your buck, you should be running an all-season tire at that point; you should not an AT tire. AT tires look cooler; we all know that—they got their little knobs and everything—but if you're going that rarely on dirt, you're going to be fine with an all-season, and you'll get more miles. Okay. And then another person says they live in southern US—hot, dry—not a lot of snow—50% on-road, 50% off-road—going to trailheads that might include, you know, some more rock. Yeah, all four of the ones that I just listed—they're so proven; you can't really go wrong with any of those. But like in desert—like it's hard to argue against like BFGoodrich for sure at that point—like the KO2s, the Yokohamas—like I said, those are on the record books as being some of the easiest tires to balance out there right now. BFGoodrich are more on the side of being harder to balance. Okay, so you—so you know—BFGoodrich—they joke around—especially with the larger sizes with trucks right now—they keep saying like you have to order five because you're definitely sending one of them back, and then out of the other four, you'll make it work, right? If BFGoodrich would be your choice for that person, I mean, they're really good desert tires; they're pretty dang tough. All right. Next—next person says they live here; they do 50% street driving or more, and then the other half is split between winter snow driving—going skiing and whatnot—and then in the summer going out to trailheads or through somewhat rough terrain. I think you should go Wildpeaks; I really do. I was hoping that was your answer. I've driven—I don't like driving BFGoodrich tires in the snow; I would just be the guy that—if I used my truck to go skiing—I would just have a set of winter studded tires that I would put on it. Okay, that's how much I don't like—like BFGoodrich and some of the other old terrains in the snow, whereas the Falkens have just been—they're pretty damn good in the snow. Sweet. So that answers that. And then if somebody wants the utmost protection in the snow—that's just like you said—a set of studded—yeah. And the thing is studded tires—they don't look pretty or anything—you're gonna run them three months out of the year in the winter, but those things are—you're a tank at that point—like you could drive normal speeds on ice, and it doesn't—nothing matters anymore; you're just glued to the road—especially in a Subaru—yeah, which they're already—yeah—pretty incredible. That's what I mean; that's what we run on my wife's Crosstrek, and that's the car that we actually take to go skiing—even though we have all these four-wheel-drive trucks—we take her Crosstrek to go skiing; it does not slide on the snow. Yeah, awesome. Well, I think that pretty much answers all the questions that people throw out there, so feel free to uh—add any other comments or—or recommendations, questions, whatever—um, down in the comments, and—and maybe Nate will peek in there every now and then. Check him out, and if you want to dive in deeper on the specs of tires and the—the down and dirty, then check out his—yeah, if you want to talk all the blurring stuff like speed ratings and plies, you can do that; it will—it's a good video to be asleep to. Yeah, awesome. Well, thanks for watching; I hope you learned something, and we'll catch you on the next one.