$800 Off-Road Tires vs. $1500 Off-Road Tires

$800 all-terrain tires versus $1,500 all-terrain tires. Does more expensive really mean more better? Let's find out. Huge thank you to eBay Motors for sponsoring this season of High Low. The whole season! With their help, we've been able to find all kinds of parts to turn low truck into America's favorite off-roader. But they've also been a huge help with High Truck too. eBay Motors provides all the tools to buy or sell your vehicle safely and securely online. They even can send out licensed third-party inspectors to verify that the vehicle that you are buying isn't just some turd. It's what we actually use to make sure we got a Tacoma good enough to be called High Truck. America's favorite off-roader. You can't just steal my slogan like that. Never heard you say that before. eBay is invested in making the automotive sales cycle honest, trustworthy, and downright secure. So you don't have to worry about thieves and scammers when you're ordering parts. And we ordered a ton of parts off eBay. Everything from wheels and tires, suspension. Whether you're spending high or spending low, eBay Motors has something in your budget. So be sure to check out eBay Motors and download the app for all your automotive sale needs. Now, let's get back to America's favorite off-roader, High Truck. Low Truck. High Truck, dude. Low Truck. High Truck. Look at Low Truck. Look at High Truck. You even have one of these? I do not, but I do have very nice paint. Yours sounds like sh**. We bought two nearly identical Toyota Tacomas and we've been modifying them to be fun daily drivers that you can take literally anywhere, except for the ocean. One Tacoma gets expensive parts, mine. And one of them gets cheap parts. Then we test them to see which components are worth spending your hard-earned money on. Primary goal of new off-road tires is obviously to increase traction, but there are a bunch of other factors affected by new tires like handling, vibration, noise, clearance, and of course, steeze. High Truck is getting a set of Nitto Ridge Grappler. That's right, Ridge Grappler All-Terrains at $342 per tire. And Low Truck is getting these Kenda Clever All-Terrains, which are less than half the price at $147 per tire. Frugal. Right off the bat, I think yours look like they're from World War II and mine look like they're from the Terminator War. Since we're upgrading to beefier tires, we need to upgrade our wheels as well. High Truck is getting these 17-inch KMC Tank beadlock wheels. And Low Truck is getting a set of 17-inch Vision wheels. Each of these KMC's are almost $500 a pop. The Visions are also $500 for the entire set. So why do these cost four times as much money? First thing, these are lighter because they're made out of aluminum alloy and these are straight up steel. These wheels have beadlocks, which means this outer rim comes off. It's held on with a bunch of bolts. And we can sandwich the tire in between these two surfaces, which means we can get through a lot more stuff. So both of our wheel and tire setups are going to look really great. They're going to perform better than stock, but will High Truck's wheel and tire combo perform three times as well? Because it does cost three times as much. Yeah. Just like with everything in life, with wheels and tires, it's important to establish some clear goals. Now we're looking to improve traction, improve our reliability, maybe gain some clearance, and hopefully have a relatively decent on-road experience, like on the highway. I hope these aren't too noisy. You've heard trucks on the highway chopping up from behind jelly. It's enough to drive a man insane. So we did some research online and it turns out that the Tacoma can basically take a 33-inch tire before you have to start modifying things like the firewall. That also takes into account our three-inch lift. You can't do it just on stock suspension, but once you lift, you get a little bit more room. We want to stuff the biggest tire we can under this truck so we get a bigger contact patch at the bottom of our tire, which will let us climb more stuff. Contact patch is the amount of tire touching the actual ground. Cool thing about off-road tires is that you can air them down, so you can actually increase your contact patch. The less air that's in the tire, if you blow these things up for highway use, you know, like to 55 PSI. The only thing touching the road is going to be like a little section like this big, but if you air them down, you're going to get a bigger contact patch. See all that contact? With all that said, let's finally put wheels in tires. They individually wrap the hardware, so we're going to spend a couple hours unwrapping hardware. One cool thing about having beadlock wheels is that we don't need to go to a tire shop to get these things mounted. We don't need to use a tire machine. All we need is some soapy water, some patience, some friendship, and some smarts. Okay, got that down all the way around. So now we just got to put our ring in place by hand, manually. It's like 200 bolts probably in a star pattern, torquing them to different specs over and over and over. So originally the plan was that we'd have to take these to a shop and just get them mounted like a bunch of chumps, but Eddie and Aaron think that we can do this ourselves in our parking lot. Yeah, straight up guys. Honestly though, I don't like either of those guys. High team thinks we're going to a shop, but really we're going to get sweaty out here and do it ourselves. They're going to be totally pranked. So stupid. We're going to use this torch and some brake cleaner to inflate this tire. We don't advise you guys do this at home. It can actually be very dangerous, but I've done this quite a bit and we think we can get it done in a safe manner. So we would like you guys to see how that's done. You guys know that I would never risk my health for entertainment purposes. First things first, you want to put a valve stem in. I've actually made that mistake in the past where you install the tire, forget the valve stem, and then you got to redo it. After you install the valve stem, we're going to get some lubrication, which is just going to be some dish soap, and we're going to push it on. Give her a flop. Oh yeah. We're going to use crowbars and pry until we get the inside diameter of the tire over this lip. I just feel like we're going to damage our wheels. Well, you've got it on the inside of the lip, so you won't ever see it. There we go. Oh, there's a little bit, but... Yeah, I know. Okay. I mean, these are brand new wheels and I could already tell if these are wheels I paid for, take it to the shop. But if you're on a budget and like... It's like $100 to get your tires mounted. You sound like a high-tech lawyer. Budget does not have an impact on doing things correctly or making sure things aren't nice. So no tire shop? Total. Why are you guys even doing it? Just for the video? No. Okay. All right, and then make sure you're ready to... Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is like one of those F1 pit stop things. I'm ready, dude. Let's do it, dude. Okay. Brake clean. One, two, three. Leave a little trail of brake clean, hit it with the torch. Come on, come on, come on. Yes, Nolan. No, no, keep going, keep going, keep going, keep going. It's not gonna explode. You're good. I've never seen a tire wall do that, dude. It's okay. Dude, that was dope. It was pretty cool. It was sick. That was pretty sick and we get to do it four more times. All right, so now that both teams have their wheels and tires mounted up, let's take a good look at them and compare them to each other. I gotta say, your guys' is looking pretty tough. Definitely the more expensive wheel. These look like different counties. Yeah. Our tread depth looks very similar. Yeah, very similar chunk. The stock wheel and tire weighs 58 pounds. That's gnarly, dude. You're centered up. Oh my god. Oh, 85.8. 85.8. 85.8 on the low truck. Oh my god. 95.9. 100 pounds a corner. Holy crap. That's so weird. This feels backwards. It's so weird. Adding a lot of weight to that area will make things handle a little bit worse. It'll make them feel an awful lot slower, but that's kind of okay for trucks. So even though we were both able to get our tires onto the wheels here by ourselves, which is cool, we still both have to go to a shop to have them balanced. Kind of defeats the purpose. But we did see how capable the trucks were with the stock wheel and tire. Unreal. So with these tires, I'm excited to see what they can do now. I'm almost nervous. They're going to be too good. Are we going to be too powerful, gentlemen? We might be in over our heads. Never stop climbing. And we are back at Gorman for yet another test. We're doing a hill climb. Now this hill behind me, as you can see, is not just a hill. It's full of all kinds of crags and crannies. Cracks and crannies? That make you lose traction. Basically, it's very hard to go up. The first try is with the stock tires. We're going to put our new wheels and tires on. Go back at it. Find out for you guys how much of a difference big old knobby all-terrains make. And how much better our more expensive ones are. No way. Give her the beans there. Well, they didn't make it. Oh, God. Oh, sweet Jesus. It's in the car. Wow, we almost made it. We both got our new tires. Let's see if a little bit more traction helps them out. All right, boys. Go get them. Yep. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, Aaron. Gun it. Gun it, baby. Gun it. Gun it. Gun it. There you go. Stayed up. Stayed up. See? Job, would you like to drive up this hill with me? I'd love to. Yes. Let's go. All right, James. You know what to do. Just got to goose a little harder at the end. The approach is good. He's riding the spine. Yep. All right, now start hitting that gas. Yep. He's cresting the hill. No problem. No big deal at all. Quick foot. Crack mac and cheese. Easy mac. Throw it in the microwave. Mom's going to be home. She said you got to be on a diet. Put your... What is he talking about? So both trucks made it up, although there was a lot of slippage and it got kind of gnarly towards the top. Aaron seems to think that if we air down the tire pressure a little bit, we'll have an easier time of it. Zach and I kind of disagree, but I don't know if we get a bigger contact patch. Technically, we might have more traction. So we're going to go ahead and give it a try. Last time we ran this, it was at 35 and now we're going to try it at around 15. Now that's one of the good things about beadlock. These guys can't go as low as we can. And if they do, there's a better chance that they might de-bead a tire, leaving them stranded on a hill or a mountain. You know what happens on a mountain after dark. Dude, no wheel slippage at all. Are you kidding me? Not even a problem. This is amazing. Did someone order some lobster with a side of butter? Dude, look at that. That's sick. That's what I'm talking about. Oh yeah, dude. All right, baby. No wheel spin. You don't hear the wheel spin. Dude, that was way easier air down. Are you kidding me? Well, as it turns out, that felt way better. Yeah, we're mature enough to admit when we are wrong and that was way easier. We felt like we had gobs of grip. It was like driving on tank tracks. For our next challenge, we've decided to take it back to the days of the Neanderthal with a classic game of tug-o-war. Loser washes the winner's truck. Three, two, one, go. Keep going. This is what I thought we might do. Oh, Jesus. Oh, God. Roll that up. We're both stuck. Yep. I think we're going to have to do this on dry land. Oh, s***. Wasted some rubber. Well, I don't know if we learned anything from that. Well, we learned that we both got pretty equally good tires and you spent a lot less. That is true. So we're back at the Buff Horseshoe with our new tires. We're going to come back to this obstacle every week and our goal is to make it all the way around. We've already attempted this. Let's see who can get further today. Who wants to go first? Me. Let's do it. Ah, you communicate. I thought you were... This is my good hand. Here's where Pumphrey fell off last time. Right in this area, wheel came off and that was all she wrote. So really, we got to get past this to improve on our last attempt, but I'm not going to be happy unless we make it all the way around. All right, here comes the initial approach. Looking good, nice and straight. Keep it straight. You're going to see how the tires flex, you know. They legitimately grab the surface. Yeah, yeah. Moment of truth area. Yeah, here we go. Give it some beans. Okay, perfect. Yep, yep, yep. Okay, okay, okay. Yes, James. All right, this is probably the hardest part. We've got a massive gap here. There are rocks, but they're not somewhere we can hit them. Gas time. Yeah, here goes the GoPro. Flawless execution. You know the difference between me and you? I'll make this look good. Hard, hard, hard, hard, hard, hard, hard. It's the first tricky bit. Hard left, hard left. He's going to have to have a lot of grip with those tires. I can't turn. Gas, gas, gas. And they fell off. Did we at least make it further than with the stock tires? No. No, okay. They're stuck in the same spot we got stuck before. I don't think it's the tires. I think it's a lack of communication. There's some sort of breakdown. Nolan gets very frustrated. Aaron's not the best communicator. We're going to give them a second shot at the buff horseshoe because I really think that they can make it. I need you to consistently throttle through this next section. More, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more. That looks pretty good. All right, we are past where I was before, so that's a good sign. Hard right. Good. Just a hair. Not that much. Brake. Go, go, go, go, go, go. Go. And out with a flare. A little off the side. If this were the Olympics, I think that would have been a DQ, but it's not. This is high-low and we're all pals and we're proud of Nolan and Aaron. This guy freaking put in work right now. We did it. Good job, bro. So Nolan, does more expensive mean more better? I'm not exactly sure, James. The uphill articulation test, both tires performed wonderfully. No real difference there. Then our final test, the Buff Horseshoe, both trucks made it through just fine. No need for the beadlocks on low truck. I'm not convinced that you need to spend twice the cash for the tires. Okay, so I agree with you on all of those points, but during the Buff Horseshoe, high truck obviously had more traction. On the declines, I was able to stop halfway down the tubes. You just kind of slid down. Yeah, there's some sliding. We measured road noise with a decibel meter. We only gained maybe a decibel. Same with low truck. I was actually very surprised. Yeah, usually when upgrading anything on a car or truck, you expect some sort of compromise, but really with these tires on both trucks, there wasn't any. I have to say I might prefer the look of low truck. The tires on high truck are a little bro-y. Like I feel like I should get a flat brimmed hat and a monster sticker for my truck. Yeah. So Nolan, which ones would you buy? I think I would keep the low setup. That package has proven itself to not de-bead at pretty low pressures. I think 15 is the limit, but for the price, the performance, so worth it, really. I think I would go with low truck's tires. Okay. But I would go with high truck's wheels so that I can have that sweet, sweet bead lock. So the big takeaway is more expensive does mean more better. Not that much better. And the budget option is still very, very good. You can have a lot of fun in a truck on a budget. Thank you guys so much for watching this video. We got another one coming up next week. We've been bashing these things into a bunch of rocks. So we're going to reinforce them with some really sick armor. High truck is getting some pre-cut bumpers and skid plates with instructions. We do have to weld it all together. Low truck, Aaron and Nolan are designing and fabricating their own stuff from scratch. It's going to be very, very exciting. Not looking forward to it. Make sure you don't miss it. Hit that subscribe button. Be kind. I love you. See you next time.