Wow, I just realized that all those vacation pics of the family at the beach showed just my son and wife.........and NOT THE TRUCK. What was I thinking?
Anyways, I have nothing to upload right away, but the 285/70/17 were supposedly the largest you can put on without a lift. One side actually slightly scrapes the Ford molded mud guards I put on.
From the pictures from the link that keydo showed, the larger tires will NOT fit without a 2" lift (go the link and see the descriptions. The pictures show the truck with the 2" lift), but I can tell you that if you have mud guards on, they will not. If I am not mistaken, the /75/ is the width percentage of the tire radius, so your tires would be even wider, so you need to make sure that you do not have any issues when cranking your tires to one side or the other.
According to BFG, the tire is only slightly larger than the 265, but I wanted as much as I could get and be stock. It is about 1" larger in diameter (0.5" taller) amd 1" wider.
In terms of the Goodyear Wrnagler RT/S's, this issue has been around for a LONG time. There are hundreds of posts on this on several Ford forums. The general response is that it is caused by poor tire quality.
I have a '98 EB that came with the Goodyear Wrangler RT/S tires. Actually, they sucked on several levels, but I had tons of problems with feathering, or is it cupping? Anyway, it simply destroyed the tires, and caused quite a lot of uncomfortable driving. This all happened in about 6k miles.
I went about correcting this issue methodically, and I am proud to say that it has been solved for 50K or so.
1) First I went in and had a complete alignment. Needed to have a camber kit installed, because i guess Ford didn't think it important to be able to change this (duh).
1a) Complete wheel balancing
2) Then, a few weeks later, I did it again, cuse the first one didn't help. This was at a local shop where I found they did great work!!
2a) Another complete wheel balancing
3) Brought it bake to the second shop again to make sure the alignment was still good. Reason being was the ride was better after the second alignment/balancing, but got worse.
THIS IS WHAT I NOTICED when I was under the truck watching them. There WERE NO WEIGHTS ON THE WHEELS. I knew they put them on, I saw them. I remember some loud bangs, but rocks will do that.
Solution: Tape weights..they hold. I found that the stock rims do not hold the rim weights. Simple wheel imbalance caused my troubles. Next came new shocks and new tires, and I have not had an issue since.