My 1999 Superduty Chase/prerun/tow truck

[Wrightracing.net]

A update to a old thread. The F350 got a upgrade to beadlocks and a larger tire. I ended up getting a deal from Alpha Tread in Tucson AZ. They converted 5, freshly painted Black, 24 bolt military Humvee double beadlock rims. With the package deal I got, it included 5 rims, 5, 37"x12.50"x16.5" BFG Baja TA tires with 99% tread military takeoff tires, 5 internal beadlock rings with all mounted and balanced the shipped to San Diego, CA. I jumped on the deal when I found their auction on ebay. I made a offer for $1900 with free shiping and they accepted it to my surprise and it took about a week for them to re-center, convert the rims lug pattern For my 1999 Super duty and paint the wheels. The shipping was fast. Everything got here and looked brand new. It was nice to get a real full size spare tire and fortunately I had made a swing away tire holder a couple years ago.

2.5 years and 45,000 miles later. The tires and rims still look great, no issues and the tires tread still has alot of meat on them. Even better, is the tire-rim combo has remained balanced with the original glued on weights on the back side of the rims. On all those forums out there, a bunch of people said you can't keep the Humvee wheels balanced without putting beads or bb's inside. I call BS on that. After a couple race season in Baja and desert trips the wheels are still balanced and wearing evenly with no signs of any problems. I am thinking, the epoxy used by Alpha Tread to glue the weights on had stopped them from falling off in hard off road conditions. So the issue of balancing Humvee wheels may be a quality of workmanship problem.

I did the move to the Humvee wheels after Discount Tire said they would not put 35"x12.5'"x16" BFG AT KO tires on my stock Ford 16"x7" rims. What made me mad was that I had bought two other sets of that size of tires from that same store since 2002. Since I would have to get new rims, I wanted to take advantage of all the cheap surplus BFG Baja TA tires that required the 16.5" rims which are notorious for tires popping off the bead, so the double beadlock was my best choice. Then in the future, I would save a lot of money to replace those tires.

On and off road performance has been great in all conditions like' snow, rain, mud, sand, silt and rock crawling. Yes, the big crew cab has done Lions Back and a bunch of other stuff in Moab. Even on wet pavement in the rain the Baja's work really well for my 8200lbs diesel truck.

One thing about the whelp is that they are a bit heavy, but my truck with stock gearing has no problem over the mountains to the desert 5with a car trailer loaded with two quads and my Bronco.

So that is my experience with surplus Humvee wheels. I would do it all again and recommend it for a big truck like mine. I do want to run the same surplus tires on my Bronco one day, but with aluminum beadlock wheels to lower the weight of the wheels wear and tare to the suspension. I will keep my Bronco as low as I can, I like the squatter look with big tires.


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[DMbronco]

Hey David, thanks for the follow up. Very cool youre getting that kind of life out of these tires.

I have 5 of them in 35x12.50x15 waiting to mount on some Alcoa beadlocks I have.

Some have told me I should have them grooved (siped?) before I mount them up to keep their manners better onroad.

Have you heard of this? Seems like youve had good performance in the wet stuff so maybe it's not necessary?

Thanks for info

[Wrightracing.net]

Hey David, thanks for the follow up. Very cool youre getting that kind of life out of these tires.

I have 5 of them in 35x12.50x15 waiting to mount on some Alcoa beadlocks I have.

Some have told me I should have them grooved (siped?) before I mount them up to keep their manners better onroad.

Have you heard of this? Seems like youve had good performance in the wet stuff so maybe it's not necessary?

Thanks for info

I've had people say the same thing to me about these tires but I think that more pertains to the Project's then the Baja Tires. I do have Baja's on my Bronco that are the same size that you are putting on and I've never had an issue on the street with them. On my Bronco it doesn't see Street driving much just off road, so my experience on a daily driver has been with the F350.

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[funinthesun95]

looks good man

[ChaseTruck754]

Bray - I ran the Bajas for a while on my exploder and my brother had them on his old Toyota too. Aside from being heavy they aren't bad - even in rain. They are a harder compound than nowmal tires, so they do wear faster & are a bit slicker in the rain, but nothing drastic that I could tell. People complain about the flat spotting too, but it was nothing majorly noticeable for me either. I do think the projects are an even harder compound then these, so they are a bit more exaggerated on the flat spotting & rain manners, etc.

[DMbronco]

thanks for the input gents- appreciate it!