Early results are in, these are some tough tyres. They have had 3000km of mixed terrain (school/grocery run, highway km, dirt road km, 50km of dodging pointy sticks, loose rock/gravel, little bit of mud) and here are the updates on how the tread looks
A little bit of chipping around the edges, but generally unscathed. The road noise has gotten perhaps a tiny bit louder, but this may be just that I'm running roofless now and I'm noticing it a bit more. Generally I'm very happy with the way these tyres are handling everything I throw at them.
One incident after leading a group of five vehicles out bush, picking our way through 50km of overgrown trail (not really a trail, we were following a spot on a map that hadn't seen activity since the 1960s) I discovered a gouge out of one of the tyre lugs that was luckily positioned in the best possible place it could have occurred:
Suffice to say, I suffered a lot less damage than one of the other vehicles on the trip:
The weight of the spare has become a minor issue for my stock tyre carrier. The rear door has just started flex a little, and rather than wait for it to get dangerous, I have moved the spare inside and secured it to the luggage area. Fortunately I have no long distance trips planned for the short term, so I've got time to organise a bumper mount tyre carrier. Putting my pennies away for one of these:
Fuel economy over 3000km has gotten worse with the addition of larger, heavier mud tyres (as expected) and I'm averaging 1.5L/100km more - this could also be due to doing a lot more off road travel now with the more reliable grip too. I"m hedging my bets until I have 10,000km on them at least.
Next post: I'll try to upload some video to illustrate how these tyres are in various conditions.