Gumbo's New Shoes
Jul. 4th, 2024 09:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
canyonwalkerIt was time to buy new tires for "Gumbo", our Nissan Xterra 4x4. The old tires were getting worn down, and some of the tread lugs were chipping and cracking. Since we don't drive our own cars a huge amount— Gumbo has rolled only about 5,000 miles in the past 12 months— the old set of tires were ready to replace on the basis of age if not also wear. And this week seemed like a good time to do it as we'd just finished one road trip and were about to embark upon another— another that would involve a few days of driving on dirt fire roads to get to/from remote hiking trailheads.
Alas the latter road trip, over this July 4 holiday weekend, got canceled due to extreme heat. It was a tough choice for us to make, but we concluded (reluctantly) it was the right one.
It was just as well we canceled that trip because the tires we bought a week earlier and had sent to shop for installation on Monday weren't ready. ...Well, three of the four tires were ready. The fourth tire was mislabeled at the warehouse and was the wrong size. 🙄 The shop ordered another one and suggested we could come back on Friday to have it installed. That would've been a day and a half after we left.
I pressed for the second appointment sooner on general principles. The shop had appointments Wednesday afternoon, so I took one. It was a pain having to waste our time going back a second time for what should have been one fix-it visit, but Hawk drove a bargain with the shop manager to comp us one of the tires. Saving a few hundred bucks sure softened the blow.
"Why 'Gumbo'?" you may ask. Well, it's a Nissan Xterra Pro 4X.... That's a lot of Xs, so we decided to name it after one of the X Men. I wanted to go for Professor X— it's kind of like Pro four X— but Hawk wanted something more physically capable since it is our all-terrain SUV. So we went with Gambit. Nickname Gumbo.
As for the tires, we've been running BFG AT KOs for as long as we've had the car. This time around I switched to Goodyear Wrangler Ultraterrain ATs. They're in the same category of tire, fairly aggressive all-terrain (AT) tires but not mud-terrains (MTs). BFG ATs have a great reputation in the offroading community. They're pricey, though. The Goodyear ATs were significantly cheaper at regular retail price and were on sale. The price difference worked out to around $400 for the set even before we got one comped for the warehouse's screw-up.
How are the new tires? Well, I've only driven them a handful of miles, and all on paved roads, but immediately I'm impressed by how they ride so much more smoothly and quietly than BFG ATs. I'll see how they handle dirt trails as soon as the heat cools down and we find free time for our next roadtrip.
Alas the latter road trip, over this July 4 holiday weekend, got canceled due to extreme heat. It was a tough choice for us to make, but we concluded (reluctantly) it was the right one.
It was just as well we canceled that trip because the tires we bought a week earlier and had sent to shop for installation on Monday weren't ready. ...Well, three of the four tires were ready. The fourth tire was mislabeled at the warehouse and was the wrong size. 🙄 The shop ordered another one and suggested we could come back on Friday to have it installed. That would've been a day and a half after we left.
I pressed for the second appointment sooner on general principles. The shop had appointments Wednesday afternoon, so I took one. It was a pain having to waste our time going back a second time for what should have been one fix-it visit, but Hawk drove a bargain with the shop manager to comp us one of the tires. Saving a few hundred bucks sure softened the blow.
"Why 'Gumbo'?" you may ask. Well, it's a Nissan Xterra Pro 4X.... That's a lot of Xs, so we decided to name it after one of the X Men. I wanted to go for Professor X— it's kind of like Pro four X— but Hawk wanted something more physically capable since it is our all-terrain SUV. So we went with Gambit. Nickname Gumbo.
As for the tires, we've been running BFG AT KOs for as long as we've had the car. This time around I switched to Goodyear Wrangler Ultraterrain ATs. They're in the same category of tire, fairly aggressive all-terrain (AT) tires but not mud-terrains (MTs). BFG ATs have a great reputation in the offroading community. They're pricey, though. The Goodyear ATs were significantly cheaper at regular retail price and were on sale. The price difference worked out to around $400 for the set even before we got one comped for the warehouse's screw-up.
How are the new tires? Well, I've only driven them a handful of miles, and all on paved roads, but immediately I'm impressed by how they ride so much more smoothly and quietly than BFG ATs. I'll see how they handle dirt trails as soon as the heat cools down and we find free time for our next roadtrip.
