6.7L Cummins Forum

Hello Everyone,

Bit the bullet yesterday and placed my order with Rickson Wheel for 19.5" rims and tire ..... Its very expensive but if you add it up correctly and do a proper comparison, on what would be the 3rd tire change, I will break even (counting cost of the rims).

I went for a 19.5" x 6.75" rim (steel powder coat black) and for the tire, went with the Bridgestone M729F M/S in a 245. Rickson folks say that has been their best performer in overall mileage life and traction so lets see what happens. My goal, 100K miles. I did not go for a drive/steer setup since I do off road traveling (though I will admit, with all the crap I put the truck through with the stock tires, anything off road would have been better). My choices were as follows and what I found out:

1. Michellin XD2S (heard horror stories trying to break them in,. grown men crying in fear from the behavior of the tires, NO THANKS)
2. Hankook DH01 (people having problems keeping them balanced)
3. Goodyear G622RSD (people very happy, not a long life tire)
4. Bridgestone M729F (people happy, overall good no problems)

My decision had to take into account that Rickson was going to do a special balancing that is very expensive and only a few place can replicate it. I did not want to be in a situation where I have to ship something back to them that has to go cross country every time.

With the stock tires, I got 30K when it was time to replace them. They wore real funny do to stock from hub setup. With new spyntech hubs up front, and rotating again, I was able to squeeze almost another 10K out of them since they are now wearing flat. When the Rickson tires show up, the factory ones should be considered racing slicks ....

If anyone has the Bridgestone tires, looking for feed back. The more the merrier Rickson is backlogged so I have time to change my order.

Cheers, more to come.

__________________

Well after waiting for 2 months, tires and rim setup arrived ! Rickson has a long back order and Bridgestone tires selling faster than they can get them. Good things I guess are worth waiting for Still missing the spare though and trim rings ....

When Rickson said one wheel weighs 140 lbs, they where serious ! Installed the setup myself and hurt my back yet again .... Gone have to come to the realization I am getting old and have a back problem.

Make sure you have one of these before messing with these tires (tire dolly $40.00):


Here what the thread on a Bridgestone M729F looks like:


Not as aggressive as the Goodyear G622RSD, but a good compromise. These tires have it stamped on the sides that they are "regrovable", nice !

I went for the 6.75" wide rims with 245 tire. Fits in the wheel very nice, same position as the factory originals:


Went with the black powder coat steel rims, in a 4x4 application and work truck, alloys do not last and I want to be able to rotate all 6 tires. Besides black always goes good with white (even with dirty ).



Rickson used a really quality metal valve stem. Very nice ! At 70 psi (as recommended) there is no sidewall bulge at all.

Front:


Rear:


So 245/70R19.5 should read 3 MPH fast. The factory originals read 3 MPH slow .... These should put me dead on with the speedo. Will find out in a couple days when I do some GPS testing.

Will say this, you can spot where Rickson trued the tires to make them round. They did their special mounting and balancing and on some, shaved the high spots off. Very smooth going the down the road !!

Cheers.

__________________

Spare arrived today .... Fit rather nicely back into the spare tire hole, cleared the exhaust by several inches and shifting toward the back added more clearance. Man, its damn heavy to get back onto the left plate and raise into the lock spot. Had several of those little harbor freight furniture dolly, laid it on that and rolled into place. Changing a flat on the road is going to be rather interesting.

Did some driving tests, the original tires where 3 MPH fast across the board. These speed is dead on at 25, 35, and 50 MPH. At speedo 65 MPH, GPS shows 66 MPH. Very interesting and seems strange. Will have to test that some more tomorrow.

Tires do have a whine to them at 65, bummer but expected with that thread pattern, at least with the music on, you can not hear it.

Did order from Northern Tools today a tire dolly like the one pictured above for $39.99 and rated at 150lbs ... That should help with tire rotation.

__________________

Turns out the speedo is a little under 1.5 MPH slow between 50 and 70 mph .... Up to 50, its dead on and 75+ its dead on .... Go figure. I do not understand why this is happening on a linear digital device.

__________________

Here is the link with lots of details on the Bridgestone commercial tires and the M729F model ....

https://www.bfentirenet.com/product_...0&partial=true

Cheers.

__________________