Michelin XZL vs XML vs Goodyear MTV

[Khalaui]

Lookin to go up to a 46” tire and obviously these three caught my eye cause of the price tag. But I’m having some issue finding information on these 3 performance in the mud. Wondering from people who have run them what they think. I had 38” XMLs on the truck when I first bought it years ago but they were damn near bald and I barely knew what I was doin so I don’t have a good reference point.

 

[willis_racing]

'84 Bronco II had some for a bit.

Sceep Didn't you have some on the gravelmaker for a bit in the way early days? and they completely disintegrated on the first outing or some shit?

Generally speaking finding reviews on mud performance of huge heavy duty truck tires that are designed for load carrying will be hard to come by. Back when it was the only way to get yuge 46s it was a thing, but those days have been gone for a long time now with the advent of massive light truck tires.

 

[Sceep]

AT2A's lasted about 3 hours.

 

['84 Bronco II]

I had 38" XMLs for a bit. They weren't too bad once I groved them, but I had to run them at 4 PSI to get them to flex on my ~4,500Lb. rig and I would still get people commenting that I should let some air out of my tires

The XML is the best Military tire larger than 37" for crawling in my opinion. Just keep in mind, they are cheap for a reason; the government isn't offloading tons of high tread tires for our benefit. Most of the tires were on vehicles that spent most of their time sitting in the arabian sun for 5+ years. My set wasn't too badly dry rotted and the oldest tire in my set was "only" 9-10 years old. If you can, I would try to inspect the tires in person and cherry-pick the least dry rotted/cracked ones you can find.

I put a lot of 303 Tire Balm on them which seemed to help reverse the dry rot a bit. Pretty much every other product on the market, such as Armor-All, actually further desicates the rubber and are for cosmetic purposes only. I was going to try out some Hot Lap 3 tire softener, but ended up parting the rig out before I ordered some to try. I think the tire softener is pretty promising since most racing organizations ban it and have tire "sniffers" to test for it.

Fourwheeler tested some external softener on some old bias ply Pitbull Rockers with promising results, however, they used externally applied tire softener. I don't think the external tire softener soaks and penetrates very deep into the tire carcass/tread. I think an internally applied softener like Hot Lap 3 would probably work a lot better in crawling applications since it would permeate through the entire carcass.

EDIT: I've posted these pictures a few times before, but here's the grooving I did that made a pretty big difference on my XMLs. I used an $80 Amazon tire groover and it sucked :laughing. I would suggest leaving the tires out in the sun for a few hours in the summer to get them as hot and soft as possible while grooving.