Ultimate Adventure: Tire Reviews from the Trail
While Ultimate Adventure 2013 is beginning to fade into history, now a month past, the vehicles are continuing to play in the mud, crawl rocks, or whatever else they come upon in the wide world of off-roading. We’ve already shared details on a few of the builds that took the journey, now hear what the drivers had to say about the performance of the Nitto Tire Trail Grappler M/Ts. If there’s one component of your vehicle that can make or break it, it’s the tires. During Ultimate Adventure these tires had to handle thousands of highway miles as well as grueling off-road trails – which is exactly what Nitto built the Trail Grappler for. Artur and his 1989 Suzuki Sidekick have been off-roading together for 20 years. Finishing a significant re-build of it just in time to head out Ultimate Adventure, Artur had a lot of miles to drive to get to Alabama where this year’s adventure started (Artur lives in Canada!) Upon returning from the trip here’s what Artur had to say: “I'm a believer! Nitto has a fantastic tire to offer the enthusiasts. Tires are very important for us off-road guys – I’ve run many, many different tires in the past and I can only think of one other which performed as well off-road. But that tire was horrible on the road - since the Mud Grappler can still handle the pavement, it’s the hands down winner for all-around extreme performance tire!!!!” ARB 4x4 Accessories have plenty of off-road adventures under their belt since their starting up in 1975. Well acquainted with the harsh demands of the trail, they build 4x4 accessories to withstand them all. Upon testing out the Trail Grapplers for the first time they said, “The tires worked fantastic! Very impressed with the tire. Got them mounted up and immediately put a ton of highway miles on them, then really put them to the test over the week of the event. Much easier to drive than the previously equipped mud terrain tires.” Off-roading since before he could drive, VJ has a variety of vehicles to choose from when he wants to head out on the trails. He decided to take a newly-acquired CUCV Chevy K30 for Ultimate Adventure. Outfitted with the new 40” Trail Grappler M/Ts, VJ was impressed - “The trip was awesome and the tires are unbelievable in the rocks, mud, sand and dirt. I will be putting a set of Nitto M/Ts on my tow vehicle for sure. When you can take a set of 40" aggressive off road tires and mount them on a set of wheels, without balancing them, and run them on the highway with no shake, shimmy or bounce - what you have there is a very high quality tire.” He had hoped to give us a burnout video, but as he said, “The tires weren’t having none of that nonsense!” Find more reviews, along with size & spec info at Nitto Tire’s Trail Grappler page.