Who's happy with the stock tire sizing?

[Lion77]

Seems this is a personal choice, yes the rally truck Ford has is on 35’s but do you really need the 1” additional clearance?

They needed the 1" of added clearance for Baja, which is deeply rutted and very rough. The driver said they ran the stock chase truck on 33's at Finke and there wasn't any advantage to the 35's because Finke is smoother and higher speed.

In fact he preferred the handling of the stock chase truck tire / suspension setup over the race truck because the race truck was more "crashy", likely due to the added sprung weight, higher chassis weight with full cage/ gear etc. but on stock damping rates, so it was under damped. The perch collars added pre-load, but the damping stayed stock due to class rules, so you have more spring without adding damping, making it more "crashy". Ironically, he was asking his mechanics to try and tune the Race truck like the stock truck!

It all boils down to use cases and terrain. 33's are going to be faster on prepped circuit tracks, high speed acceleration, braking and handling etc. but offer less clearance for very rough terrain.

The stock RR with heavy bead locks was faster overall in Ford's head-to-head comparison of the BR, RR and F-150 Raptor R. You could argue that maybe the driver of the RR was just the better driver, but they are all professional drivers and when you watch the video, the balance of handling vs power seems to make the truck easier overall to drive.

If you had added in a Pro Cal + Method wheels for the RR + BR (each getting the same upgrades, as there is no pro cal offered for the F-150 Raptor R), the RR would be even faster by a much bigger margin. RR is on stock 33's....

Ultimate Raptor Challenge: F-150 R vs Ranger vs Bronco Raptor!

I think 35's make sense if your tailoring the truck for specific terrain like the Ranger Raptor Race truck or for trails. Some people basically want their RR for trails, but didn't want a truck as slow as a Jeep / Colorado on 35's. So a modded Ranger on 35's, even if slower than stock, is a better trade-off in acceleration vs trail capability than a stock Jeep Gladiator or ZR2 Bison on 35's.

Maybe someday I will move to 35's if it becomes a weekend toy only, but for the foreseeable future where it's a multi-use UTV, I prefer the acceleration, braking, handling + fuel economy of the 33's + lightweight Method 705's, and just looking to upgrade to a better 33 (XTM AT's) over the stock K03.

I like my KO3's for off-road, dry handling is decent, but wet traction is unpredictable. They are also pretty loud now at 29k miles. It's not that it's as horrible as some people claim. It's decent, but what I don't like is the edgy nature of the KO3's in the wet. You have traction then you don't and you can't tell when you step over the edge of grip in the wet, so you have keep further back from the edge to avoid accidentally stepping over.

So, the XTM AT's will solve that problem, plus I do say the truck would be better on-road if the steering precision was better (not slop, but delay / vagueness) that the KO3's have on-road, XTM's fix that as well, all while offering comparable off-road performance and about another 3lbs less per corner un-sprung mass.

Stock KO3's + Stock Beadlocks = 92lbs unsprung mass per corner

New setup with Method 705's + XTM AT's (pending on the tires, already got the wheels) = 78.2lbs unsprung mass per corner.

That's a HUGE difference, the Fox 2.5's will function more optimally on re-bound (faster rebound from less mass to accelerate), giving me better high-speed stability / traction, the steering is more precise / responsive, as is braking and acceleration.

So my goal with the truck is to improve on-road dynamics while at minimum, maintaining stock off-road capability, and if possible, improve upon both simaltaneously vs. the goal of improving just one off-road metric at severe penalty for on-road dynamics.

So tires, wheels and angled rock sliders offer the biggest gains overall and fit those goals. The tires+ wheels offer improvements for both on and off-road. The rock sliders from GOAT offer 4" more side clearance and very little weight gain over stock running boards (< 50 lbs total and its sprung mass), thus not impacting on-road dynaics while significantly imrpoving off-road.

Most trails around here don't have huge rock steps, but rather it might big a decent sized boulder on one side of a trail where side clearance matters more than raw approach / break-over / ride heigh. There's also a lot of hills, ditches and embankments where off-camber stability is more important than clearance / ride height, which plays to the squat profile of the RR.

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