I am about to change my tyres, does anyone have experience with 900/16?
Their advantage for me is that they're narrow and therefore the load on the vehicle is much smaller than with wide tyres.
Their other advantage is that I don't have to buy new rims - I now have 16" Wolf HD 6.5" on the truck.
Finally, the 900/16 is a standard tyre size for some military vehicles here so they are easily available.

We have an Israeli made 900/16 tyre here - nylon, diagonal, 10 ply - I wonder how it functions on the road.

As far as I know, 900/16 = 34" (9+16+9) but in Expedition Exchange I saw they measured the Michelin XZL 900/16 as 36"+
- any ideas why?

The other tyre I had in mind was MTR 35/12.5/15 which I have on the D90 and with which I am very satisfied, but as I said, I lean more towards the 900/16. What do you think?

Thanks,

Erez

I have 9x16 XZL on the Frankenrover as daily driver tires and they are 36.4" tall according to the Mich. specs. They are pretty good tires, but seem a little to thin for my tastes (especially compared to the 38x12.5" TSL-SX's).

Billster

ps. I can run the truck about 70 or so with the XZL's and my gearing and there is narry a vibration with two bags of equal in each tire.

I thought about the 900/16 mainly because they're narrow and the truck has the original Salisbury axle and Rover type axle with MD half shafts and 4.7 gears. I don't want to overload it.

Are my calculations regarding the 900/16 being 34" correct? Is it only 36" in the Michelins ?

For tyres larger than 36" I think I would need to change the axles to get better reliability. But this would not be legal in Israel and I would like the truck to stay on the road :flipoff2: .

Erez

I run 900R16 Michelin XLs which measures out to a little over 36", and they are OK on the road - The only real vibration I get is at slow speeds, around 5 mph, because of the really badly chopped up tread. XL's need to be rotated often, and if you don't, you end up with a very rough tread. All in all, they are good tires.

I used to run 35X12.5X15 mud terrain copies. They worked about the same overall - better in soft stuff, but worse in some conditions.

But then again, 900R16s are getting waay too small for my rover...:flipoff2:

If nothing else, a 8.25R16 Michelin is 34" tall.....

For what is is worth, 9x16s are suppposed to be 35.4" tall accorsing to the British standard for tyres.

http://members.shaw.ca/jbarge/britishtires.html

For my money, Michelin is the only set of tires I'll run on my truck.

And I like the 36" tall factor. :D

The 9.00x16 Michelin XL's I had specced out at 36.1", and my friend's 9.00x16 Michelin XZL's spec out at 36.3".

The 8.25x16's do spec out at 34", so that might be a good alternative for you.

Greg, anything under 35 is NOT an alternative, it becomes a compromise :flipoff2: