Cooper AT3 vs. Falken Wildpeak vs. BFG AT KO

82fb

Adventurer
Another data point for those looking for tires. I ran the Rubicon trail this weekend. In to Buck Island Lake and back to Loon Lake twice. First off, I used to run the trail pretty regularly back in the early to mid 90's through about 2005. Probably done it 20-30 times in various vehicles. I currently have a 98 XJ on 315/75r16 bfg at ko tires that have about 50,000 miles on them and maybe 20% tread left. My brother drove his fj40 on 37 inch cooper stt's that are around 90% tread. It was embarrassing how bad the coopers sucked. Multiple times the xj crawled obstacles without spinning a tire, while the fj40 sat and spun.

If coopers have some magical silica infused rubber, I am staying far, far away!

I hear far too many tire "experts" talk about the outdated tread pattern of the bfg at, or the vast improvements in tire design since the bfg at was created. There were several hundred vehicles on the trail this weekend. Of the ones I saw, probably 90% ran some sort of mud tires. I think the other 10% that I saw were on bfg at's. I don't recall seeing any other all terrain tires. Yeah, they suck in mud. Newsflash... Every tire I ever had sucked in mud, except 38.5x14.5x15 tsl sx's. Those were fun.

I have run these same bfg at's through the Dusy Ershim trail in varied conditions including a foot of snow. No problems, no winching, they just work.
 

xjoverland99

New member
Well shoot this really throws me off. I know they have released the 32 11.50 15 KO2, I wonder if that tire is as good as the old KO. I was leaning towards a more aggressive tire as I know some of the places I regularly go to have had tons of rain and rocks, and the new KO2 has a wrap around tread that goes pretty far down the side. But now I feel like I am back at square one.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
 

P2W

Observer
I can only speak to the BFG Ko (old school) tire and the Cooper StMaxx

I had a set of the BFGs in 31 10.5 on my 2000 Dakota and the tire worked very well in most conditions I used them in.
Never really ran that truck through deep mud, it did however see a fair amount of 24+" of snow, fire roads, etc.
Those tires had 45K miles when I traded the truck in at 175K

The next truck is a 06 Dodge Quadcab
I had a set of BFGs LT 285-70 17s, really good tire for most of what I threw at it, till they started wearing.
New they chunked out a couple tread blocks (lot of shale where I drive) started wearing uneven, made a good bit of noise, lost wet weather handling however the tires still went 60K miles.

The next set that went on the Quadcab are Cooper StMaxx 285-70 17s
I wanted a more aggressive tire than the BFGs and on looks alone it won that.
When they were new I was surprised by how quite they were compared to the lugs (not really a mud tire but they're close)
I have abused these tires in the shale and there is no chunking like the BFGs
They have worked excellent in the snow both off & on road (we've had an interesting winter on the eastcoast)
The wet weather handling is very good, I have noticed that it requires some aggressiveness to force them to break loose.
Coopers currently have 30K on them and 7/16" tread depth the Dodge has 193K.


Dodge 01.JPG
 
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Dake21

Adventurer
Between those 3 I'd take the AT3. They are good on the highway, excellent traction on wet and loose terrain and self clean good. They are good in the mud if you go in a straight line.
They are, however, terrible on ice.
 

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