So I picked the best looking set of 4 our of the 5 tires and headed over to a local shop to have them mounted and balanced. Ended up dropping them off on Saturday and went to pick them up on Monday. That's when things started going down hill. One of the guys asked how well the tires rode before, I told him I didn't know since I bought the tires used but did notice that one of the wheels had an exorbitant amount of weight on it. He said they could only static balance the tires and they might ride rough. First wheel on, and the lug nuts wouldn't fit. No problem I thought! They put the original wheel back on. Quick trip over to the parts store and i'll be good to go. Lo and behold, no one local carries the thin style lugs that will fit this wheel. So I get home and order some gorilla lug nuts from Amazon that will arrive on Wednesday.
Get the lug nuts shipped to work and head to the next town over to get the wheels put on. Wheels installed now. Sounds awful at half turn and barely noticeable at full turn. Get out to check where it's rubbing and it's in the back part of the inner fender as other members have noted. no big deal, can take a heat gun to that later and get that squared away. Start driving again and the tires howl a bit which is expected. Accelerate past 40mph and all hell breaks loose. Steering wheel shimmying like i've only seen once before in my JKR. Drive like a grandma all the way home staying below 40mph where the steering feels great!. At that point I start questioning my choice of purchasing used tires as one might imagine. It starts raining outside so there's no switching tires tonight, decide i'll go ahead and drive it to work like this in the morning and re-asses after that.
Next morning a friend on facebook suggests to have tires road force balanced by a local shop near my office. So we give that a shot. More bad news. One tire is good to go. The other three have...well lets say issues. One RFB at 35 lbs and another at 50ish i believe. They were able to half this. Another had some other type of issue which I can't remember. Needless to say the technicians notes on the tires were plentiful. I wish I had a copy of that sheet in hindsight. But they thought the tires should ride better as the previous balance was way off. They didn't.
On the way home I decided to push through the monster shimmy at 40mph to see what would happen. In my Jeep there were certain speeds that tires behaved similarly. Thankfully I was able to cruise at 60mph with minimal shimmy. Next step? Let's put stock tires up front and see how she handles. So that's what I did. Two 33's up front and a pair of 37's out back. Mad Max look. She drove great!
Full disclosure. I had $900 invested in the truck load of used parts I bought off this craiglist seller. Thus far i've recuperated $360 of that and still have a set of 5 wheels with TPMS sensors along with a OR Fab tire carrier for a Jeep left to sell. When it's all said and done I should have less than $400 invested in the tires. Their primary purpose is for offroading at various trails. I'd rather drive on the 37's to the trailhead than swap out tires once I get there, but at this point that's not going to be feasible. So for now i'll swap the rears the night before we head out and the fronts once I get to the trail. Or I may trying mounting them all up again when I get some time to see how it rides with the tires in different locations. Two of the wheels/tires don't have much weight on them at all. For some reason one with a bunch of weight and one with very little were the two up front. I feel like two with very little weight on the front axle would be the better combination.
And now, the pictures...
TLDR: Bought used tires - they ride like crap
Of course i'm a bit biased, a friend of mine has them on his Raptor and my mom has them on her JKU. I think they look great on any rig.
But I did look and drive a few.