I stuffed some 33.2" (275/70/18) Goodyear Wrangler Duratracs on my completely stock 07 Expedition a few weeks ago. With about 1,500 miles on the tires, I thought I would give an update on how everything is working:
I have only managed to get the tires to rub very slightly one time, and this was completely by accident. I was traveling down a gravel road at 40mph with my family to go swimming at the lake. The road was very smooth and if I hadn't had my kids in the truck, I would have probably been driiving a little faster. When I crested the top of a hill, to my great surprise, I saw 5 or 6 "whoops" in front of me; you know, rows of dirt about 1ft high across the road every 20 ft or so apart. I don't know who put these rows of dirt on the road or why they did it, but I didn't have any time to slow down, so I lifted my foot off the gas and told everyone to hold on. We had a rough ride, but I was able to keep the truck under control during my 15 second career as a Baja racer. I would never intentionally hit anything that hard, but I have to say that the Expy handled it nicely!
When we arrived at the lake, I looked carefully at each fenderwell and noticed that the front-right and front-rear tires made just enough contact with the top-left corner of each fenderwell to clean the dirt off so that there was a clean area about the size of my thumb. No damage whatsoever, just very slight contact. I have done some moderate offroading in and out of ruts while turning the steering wheel back and forth and the tires have never rubbed. So if you have 3rd gen Expy with no lift and want to go with bigger tires, 275/70/18 is about as big as you can go.
The Duratracs have worked very well in loose dirt, rocks, and mud. I have been very impressed with how these tires grip, especially in the mud. The Duratracs are only slightly louder than the stock Pirellis on the highway. I noticed a very small decrease in gas mileage. I was averaging 18-20mpg on each refill, but now I am averaging 17-19mpg (this is after correcting my mileage for the 3.45% that my speedo is off).
I am about to install a SCT Livewire programmer as soon as my shop sends a custom tune (the Livewire does not come with a preloaded tune for my Expy
). Stay tuned to see how the SCT Livewire programmer works!
I have only managed to get the tires to rub very slightly one time, and this was completely by accident. I was traveling down a gravel road at 40mph with my family to go swimming at the lake. The road was very smooth and if I hadn't had my kids in the truck, I would have probably been driiving a little faster. When I crested the top of a hill, to my great surprise, I saw 5 or 6 "whoops" in front of me; you know, rows of dirt about 1ft high across the road every 20 ft or so apart. I don't know who put these rows of dirt on the road or why they did it, but I didn't have any time to slow down, so I lifted my foot off the gas and told everyone to hold on. We had a rough ride, but I was able to keep the truck under control during my 15 second career as a Baja racer. I would never intentionally hit anything that hard, but I have to say that the Expy handled it nicely!
When we arrived at the lake, I looked carefully at each fenderwell and noticed that the front-right and front-rear tires made just enough contact with the top-left corner of each fenderwell to clean the dirt off so that there was a clean area about the size of my thumb. No damage whatsoever, just very slight contact. I have done some moderate offroading in and out of ruts while turning the steering wheel back and forth and the tires have never rubbed. So if you have 3rd gen Expy with no lift and want to go with bigger tires, 275/70/18 is about as big as you can go.
The Duratracs have worked very well in loose dirt, rocks, and mud. I have been very impressed with how these tires grip, especially in the mud. The Duratracs are only slightly louder than the stock Pirellis on the highway. I noticed a very small decrease in gas mileage. I was averaging 18-20mpg on each refill, but now I am averaging 17-19mpg (this is after correcting my mileage for the 3.45% that my speedo is off).
I am about to install a SCT Livewire programmer as soon as my shop sends a custom tune (the Livewire does not come with a preloaded tune for my Expy
). Stay tuned to see how the SCT Livewire programmer works!
