New Yokohama Geolandar M/T+ tires ...
Making its debut from Yokohama this spring is the newly redesigned Geolandar M/T mud terrain tire labeled the M/T+! The new design boasts changes in tread design, the addition of protective "sidewall bars", extended tread down the upper sidewall and an new rubber compound engineered to extend tread life, decrease noise and decrease chipping off road.
Having gone through this "song and dance" with "new, redesigned" car tires, truck tires, and motorcycle tires and having seen good tires turned into useless wastes of pencil erasers I was immediately suspicious. OK. Maybe "suspicious" isn't quite the right word. Really I was initially paranoid. VERY paranoid. Having run the Yokohama Geolandar M/T mud terrain tires for the last four or five years in 31", 33" and 35" sizes through all kinds of on and off road environments I've acquired a very healthy respect for the original Geolandar M/T. The original Geolandar M/T was as sticky as a TSL off road but with much better wear characteristics on the street and performed as well on the highway as any A/T I've ever run but with the tread design to handle heavy rain and any winter snow storm Colorado could throw at them. So, saying I am happy with the original Geolandar M/T design is probably a bit of an understatement. It also should explain my initial panic upon hearing about Yokohama's redesign.
A friend of mine who had also been running the original Geolandar M/Ts on his Toyota Tacoma was the first to alert me to the new design by Yokohama. He had been running the original M/Ts on his Tacoma for several years and also been extremely happy with them. In fact, he was the person that originally talked me into trying them myself. When he traded in his old Toy on a new Tacoma his first task was to replace the worthless factory Wrangler GSA tires with new 16" P-metric 33" Geolandar M/Ts. After some consideration (he was just as paranoid as I was) he decided to give the new M/Ts a try. The rational being that we really didn't have a choice in the long run so better to find out sooner than later if this was going to be a "BAD THING". He purchased the new Geolandar M/T+s in August of 2004 so as of the writing of this article he has almost nine months of wear on them.
The beginning of February 2005 it was time for me to replace my front two 35" Geolandar M/Ts. I had a choice between getting two of the older M/Ts or ordering a pair of the new Geolandar M/T+s. After some serious consideration, several heartfelt prayers, and a couple of offerings to suck up to the 4x4 gods I decided to purchase the new M/T+s. Officially, the 35" flotation sized M/T+s were not supposed to be available until late spring, early summer of 2005 but thanks to some serious "leg work" by a very valued tire supplier I was able to get a pair by the middle of March. By the writing of this article I've managed to put on a little more then two thousand miles of city, highway and off road driving. Not a lot of miles but enough to notice some differences and since this is Colorado enough to test them in every condition except 100 degree dead of summer temperatures.
To be continued ...