New Tires for the Oilybits Hilux

After a lot of deliberation (20,000 miles worth!) I finally decided on which "Nobbly" tires i would be putting on my beloved Hilux, the winners being the "Cooper Discoverer STT" in 31x10.50xR15. These were chosen because:

1. The tread pattern is awesome, and they also have White Lettering which is dead cool

2. They are much less expensive than BFGoodrich Mud or Goodyear Wrangler MTR

3. Their soft, sticky compound makes them better on-road than the competition

5. The A-Team used Cooper tires, so if theyre good enough for Mr.T, then theyre good enough for me!

After a lot of searching around the usual online outlets, Melksham Motor Supplies gave me the best price for 5 Fitted and also used adhesive balancing weights resulting in a superb finish. Contact them on Melksham 01225 703529

Due to the bigger width and diameter, and despite having also fitted 30mm aluminium wheel spacers all around, the tires rubbed a little inside the front arches, so some minor adjustment was carried out to the corners of the front bumper... with a hacksaw. The tires still rubbed on the mudguards a tad on full lock after this, but this was cured by heating the mudguard with a heat gun until the plastic was semi-liquid, and moulding it into a more appropriate shape to avoid conflict. Sounds crazy melting and chopping off bits of my car to accomodate oversize tires but it is definitely worth it.

Of course enlarging the tire OD has resulted in the MPG calculator reading lower as it thinks the engine is using the same amount of fuel but covering less Miles, the Bridgstones rotate at 690.7 Revs-Per-Mile, but the Coopers rotate at 654.2 Revs-Per-Mile, so I have to mentally divide my MPG and MPH displays by 1.0558 to get the true figures, this is like being back in a cockpit, just my brain isnt as quick as it used to be. Fortunately as all cars read 10% over on the MPG display, it still means that im not travelling quite as fast as the display shows, so ive no danger of being framed. After a 50 mile combined jaunt across the plain im averaging 36.9 MPG, a slight increase on previous figures, and a truly excellent figure for a 3.0L Turbocharged Engine, beats all the competiton by a huge margin, the Toyota is definitely the only option when it comes to Pick-Ups.

The next question was what is the correct tyre pressure for these oversized tyres?!?! Well, there is a proper calculation to determine this...

Look at the sidwall of the tyre, there will be text saying max XXXXKg at XXPSI - on my Cooper Discover STT tyres this value was 1030Kg @ 50PSI. Now, times 1030Kg by 4 (the number of tyres each capable of bearing that weight on the vehicle) this gives you 4120Kg. Now divide the normal weight of your vehicle, in my case this is 3000Kg, by 4120Kg this gives us 0.7281553, finally times this by the maximum tyre pressure of 50PSI, this gives us 36.40 PSI :-)