Pajero Owners Club of South Africa

Hi Guys. I feel really stupid. Over the past few weeks, I noticed that my Gen 4 was pulling to the left and that there was a shudder when braking. Yesterday I took the car to TWT for a check-up. As a background, these tyres are about 30,000km old.
The thread is worn on the inside of the right front, and the outside of the left front. The back tyres has also not worn correctly. The worn thread means that I will have to replace the tyres as they are too thin.

I admit, I have not rotated the tyres as I should have. That is whyI feel stupid. I am also a bit naive. I only noticed yesterday that the thread pattern on 1 of the tyres are different to the others...I had all 4 fitted at the same time, brand new.

So, what to do? I have a perfect Geolander spare tyre that has never been used. Do I stick with Yokohama, or, do I go for Hankook or BFG? And, If I go another brand, do I keep the spare?

I use my pajero daily. I would say I do about 80% on tar. But, I am planning a Namibia Botswana trip next year that will see some more off-road.

I would really appreciate your inputs here.

Geolander and pirelli scorpion are really excellent tyres for if you spend most of your time on the road. They are softer IMHO and my experience has been that you tend to get fairly low kms out of them (under 70k). Recently my FIL had to replace his geolander ATs after 45k kms... And they were rotated every 15k... (No off roading!)

If you do 80% tar - what's the other 20%? Gravel/rock/overlanding?

I was very temped on my last change to actually stick with HT tyres. My previous set of bridge stone dueller 694 HTs I got 70k kms and which did moremi twice, Central Kalahari, Mozambique, bad roads/passes in lesotho with plenty sharp rocks, lots of bad gravel roads in eastern cape... However its mostly me and my wife travelling, thus relatively light...

If you're going to be loading heavily, you might need to think about going with AT tyres...

Thanks for the input. The other 20% is mostly gravel and dirt road. I will be towing a trailer, so, the A/T should then definitely be an option!

In that case you need to shop around a bit for prices... The resellers vary quite a bit.

After all my research it came down to the Coopers on the one end (more aggressive, will last longer, slightly more road noise, edpensive) vs Goodyear wranglers or Hankook AT (better road noise, slightly less durable but better road holding, much cheaper).

Its always a tradeoff between longevity / tyre strength vs road holding performance (esp on wet roads).

In the end the wranglers were the best bang for buck for me at R1800 a tyre.