Tires Gears and Questions for a Gen II

At the present I am still running my beloved 255 LTX's but they are starting to finnaly show their age after the past few years. So far I have installed new rear leaf spings with a large overload spring and WAR 153 shackles. The fornt is still stock but I plan on getting 1" from a TT and then installing a 2" BL. Now here come my questions:
1) I know that 265/75/16's will fit but what do you all think about 285's?
2) Since I only have 3.73 gears, and a 5.0, will I notice lag/ sluggishness because of the larger tires?
3) what do you all think about the new goodyear all terrains with the slient aromor technology and re-enforceed side walls? I would love to get some MT/R's but I drive 200-250 miles a day for work and really can't take it in the back side on fuel economy

 

[SplashMan]

If you like gas milage don't get bigger tires unless you can regear at the same time. I lost 5 mpg when I went to bigger tires. I'm in the process of going back down to 31s to try and get some milage back.

 

[ExplorerDMB]

-285/75/16s = 33x11.50 -- you will trim, a lot
-boominexplorer had 35s and had 4.56 gears. He said it was too low and now had 4.10s. I think if you had 33s or lower and 3.73s that you would be fine.
-with that much driving your going to see some fuel mileage changes and some quicker suspension wear. Might want to wait til winter when gas prices go down some

-Drew

 

[je5]

Make sure you don't test drive it with different height tires on only one axle since it will damage your TC.

 

[Fozzy_Bear]

...
but I drive 200-250 miles a day for work and really can't take it in the back side on fuel economy

Well, I'm a n00b in the whole off-roading world, but I have been doing a lot of researching tires lately. If you are driving 250 miles a day, you don't want to go with 285's. I have been looking around a lot and there is a clear pattern

Mentioning fuel economy = go with smaller tires.


But that's just second hand stuff coming from me. I could be wrong.

I CAN tell you that my brother went with tires that were one inch taller and one inch wider on his daily driver (an 04 jeep, but the principals are the same) and he is absolutely hating it. They look mean and agressive and he loved them for 5 days... Until the first time his tank needed refilled. Now he drives his wife's mini-van around every chance he gets. I don't even know you dude, but I sure don't want that to happen to you.

good luck either way.

.

 

[ExplorerDMB]

My brother was similar. He has a 99 2wd ranger and put some 31s on it and he didn't like them after the first fill up. He broke them down and sold them!

-Drew

 

[GJarrett]

At the present I am still running my beloved 255 LTX's but they are starting to finnaly show their age after the past few years. So far I have installed new rear leaf spings with a large overload spring and WAR 153 shackles. The fornt is still stock but I plan on getting 1" from a TT and then installing a 2" BL. Now here come my questions:
1) I know that 265/75/16's will fit but what do you all think about 285's?
2) Since I only have 3.73 gears, and a 5.0, will I notice lag/ sluggishness because of the larger tires?
3) what do you all think about the new goodyear all terrains with the slient aromor technology and re-enforceed side walls? I would love to get some MT/R's but I drive 200-250 miles a day for work and really can't take it in the back side on fuel economy

1) I fit 285's a long time ago before I went up further in size - I'm pretty sure I was one of the first to do it on a mostly-stock second generation Explorer. Click on "Gerald's Truck" in my sig line below and go to the second post which contains a lot of info that you might find useful, including my tires. There's links in that post to the original threads when I did it, and what I had to do to do it. With a 2" BL and a 1" TT you will have to do trimming of the plastic within the rear of the fenderwell and also take some off of the edge of the front bumper and move it forward a bit, but you should be able to fit them if you don't care about having to do that.
2) I had a 4.0 SOHC and 4.10 gears when I went to 285's. The combination of the low gearing and larger tires resulted in absolutely no difference whatsoever in my gas mileage. If I had taller gearing then of course the mileage would probably have gone down the tubes, but with 4.10, the power was enough to take advantage of the larger tires and offset that possibility. What I am saying is that with the even more horsepower of your 5.0, maybe the 3.73 gears can handle the larger tires without killing your mileage. If you had 4.10 and that 5.0, I'd bet that your mileage would go up not down. I have to admit that I don't know what your 3.73 will do though, it may go down. I wonder if the other posters that noted the lousy mileage had 4.0 OHV engines which of course wouldn't be able to handle larger tires without screwing up the mileage. I believe your 5.0 may yield different results. Hopefully someone here has a 5.0 with a 3.73 axle and went to 33" tires and can conclusively provide affirmation of the effect.
3) I had two sets of MT/Rs for about 100k miles on my vehicle and loved them. They'll get very decent street miles/wear. I'd think that tire size will affect your mileage more than a choice between MT/Rs and all terrains. If you don't do a lot of offroading, I'd suggest the all terrains. The MT/Rs are extremely quiet for an aggressive tire onroad and perform absolutely fantastic offroad, but once they get past 50% treadwear or so, they start to get loud like a mud terrain does. I'm just offering food for thought and no opinion, it depends on what you want to accomplish and how often you really go offroad.

 

[MountaineerGreen]

With only TT and shackles, I fit 265/75 16 with minor trimming. I cant possibly see how 285's would fit without a BL.
What I trimmed:

The overall look:

As for mileage and performance, I havent seen any adverse effects. I reprogramed my computer for the larger tire size, so my MPG is accurate. ~16 MPG Mixed driving. If you didnt recalibrate your speedometer, the MPG would be way low when actually you have driven further.

EDIT: The BFG All Terrains are awsome tires, quiet on the highway and great off road. Ive heard of people getting lots of miles out of a set too.