Duratrac -quiet progress
Phil fitted four new Goodyear Wrangler Duratrac 265 70 R17,112/109R to his JK, having read an online review. The review gave these a very good overall rating for on road and off road performance and a better than average noise performance.
Well 3000 miles later, they are still quiet, still giving good grip with virtually no signs of wear. They really are quiet too, motorway speeds are not a chore, you don't have to turn the radio up to overcome the road noise; that's something of a novelty after years of driving various off-road type vehicles. The performance is comparable to on road tyes when turning, accelerating and braking hard in urban commuter use. Inevitably there will be on road performance trade offs, this is an off road type after all, but in regular use its hard to find them.
Phil gave them a good test when it snowed over the winter, and assures me that the off road performance was great. Without a specific test and results to compare its difficult to be more quantitative, but with a couple of inches of snow on top of a few inches of mud he was never in danger of getting stranded and felt the tyres were unstoppable.
Mind you this flexibility comes at a price - approx £190 apiece, but in this case at least, you get what you pay for.
