bfgoodrich macadam: anyone tried?

[dwalin]

life sucks a lot, i need new tires to replace old bridgestones so i try to choose new ones. heard a lot of good things about bfgoodrich, but i do not need the most popular all terrain ones, i very rarely (if ever) go off-road. currently i consider either bfgoodrich long trail t/a or the new (no reviews anywhere!) bfgoodrich macadam. does anyone have any experience with the macadams?
also, would it be wise (and safe) to lower my truck a bit putting 255/65R16 on instead of factory installed 255/70R16? would it give me better road control, stability and mileage? sorry for a stupid question, i'm not very experienced on this part. i just try to get some good without getting too deep in my pocket: 255/65R16 is $124 a tire and 255/70R16 is $145 a tire. i don't understand why prices are so different for virtually the same tire sizes but here it is.

 

[4X402]

In reality, lowering by that small of an amount is going to hardly be noticable visually. The handling difference will most likely not be noticable. But it will also help with acceleration, effectively lowering the gearing of your X. for a more significan increase in handling i would try to find a wider tire say a 265 as this will increase the contact with the road and the tires will be stick out a bit farther than stock, making it less likely to roll.

 

[dwalin]

In reality, lowering by that small of an amount is going to hardly be noticable visually. The handling difference will most likely not be noticable. But it will also help with acceleration, effectively lowering the gearing of your X. for a more significan increase in handling i would try to find a wider tire say a 265 as this will increase the contact with the road and the tires will be stick out a bit farther than stock, making it less likely to roll.

thanks for the reply. better acceleration would be good, sometimes i just need to accelerate rapidly. helps a lot in traffic jams, you know.
as for wider tires, currently i have 275/70 R16, and don't like it very much. i don't know whether it's because tires didn't survive the harsh winter being placed in garage basement or they're just too big for this vehicle but handling is awful, really awful. speeds lower than 50 mph are somewhat okay, but anything higher... i'm scared, really. it will find any track on the road and put itself into it with sharp movement, i'm feeling every little rock on the road on the steering wheel (and roads here are as bad as they can be, imagine that), controlling the vehicle is hard, so every time i need to go faster than 50 mph i feel myself like test pilot on his first flight. i think a half of my truck's exhaust is my own nerve cells. so no, i don't want tires bigger than factory default. honestly, i have no experience of driving explorer with factory default wheels, because when i bought it it has bridgestone winter dueler 265/70 R16 on it, with a complect of summer duelers 275/70 R16 given to me as a bonus. i dunno why the previous owner used such a big tires, he doesn't seem to go off-road very often (not with h/t class tires anyway) but here it is. so now i'm facing the dilemma of buying default size tires or lowered ones.
sorry for these long complaints but i'm really not an expert in tires and wheels (i'm a newby, to say the truth ) and i have somewhat tight budget for new tires so i don't want to make a mistake, i'll hardly have a chance to correct it.

 

[4X402]

Almost all of my handling experience comes from imports, I used to autocross/track race a pretty well built 99 civic. So most of my knowledge her is more import related. First off thats on a 275/70 which is a pretty tall tire im running 265/70's on my lightly lifted x. If u want to keep the tire shorter ur gonna wanna increase width but decrease section height such as say a 275/60. that 60 i used is a percent of the treadwidth used in height, i have the equation somewhere on my pc cuase i always forget it. I am personally delighted with my Dunlops, they make a AWESOME street tire, and there decent offroad. and they are also pretty inexpensive by comparison.