BFGoodrich All-Terrain T/A KO Tires Waterville ME

BFGoodrich All-Terrain T/A KO Tires By Zach Bowman, DriverSide Contributing Editor  1978 International Scout Utility



1978 International Scout
Utility
It’s easy to underestimate exactly how much of an impact tires have on your vehicle’s driving dynamics. Ride quality, cabin noise, braking, acceleration and handling can all be vastly improved or absolutely ruined depending on your wheel and tire choice. Take my 1978 International Scout Terra. When I first purchased the truck, it was meant for weekend romps in the mountains – fording streams, tackling fire trails and generally spending more time off road than on in the grand Deep South tradition. To that end, I equipped the Scout with a matching set of second-hand Cooper Discoverer mud terrain tires. 
 








With its feet in the dirt , the Scout performed incredibly well. Once it hit pavement, the tune changed significantly. With massive, evenly spaced tread blocks, the Cooper tires were beyond noisy. What’s worse, when it rained the tires turned into ice skates, sending me pirouetting down the road in a massive, rusty blur on more than on occasion. Braking was a similar joke, even in the best of weather, and when things turned snowy the truck was all but useless on the road. 
 
After a move from the Virginian mountains to Knoxville, TN, my beloved off-roader quickly became just another tool of domestication. Instead of romping through the wilderness, the Scout was sentenced to hauling off the trash once a week and making multiple runs to the home improvement store to pick up material for a remodeling project. The on/off road ratio had inverted dramatically, and the Scout was still stuck with tires that made absolutely no sense on pavement. Something had to be done. 
 
Thanks to the explosion of small SUVs and Crossovers recently, there are a good number of quality, on-road tires available right now, but this is a truck. It also needs to be able to tackle any of the numerous off-road trails that run through the Smoky Mountains. BFGoodrich’s All-Terrain T/A KO tires are enormously popular for just this reason, and our friends at BFGoodrich were kind enough to supply us with a set to evaluate. 
 
Despite their on-road capabilities, these rollers look the mean enough to be at home on even the meanest of trucks . That’s not so important on a junker like mine, but for guys and gals out there more into show than go, it plays a key role in tire selection. Those meaty sidewall blocks aren’t just jewelry, either. They’re designed to provide extra bite if you need to lower the tire’s pressure in slippery stuff or sand. What’s more, the sidewall is made of tough three-ply polyester for low-pressure use, so you don’t have to worry about goose eggs or tears.
 
The All-Terrain T/A KO tires use a high-void tread design to accommodate variations in surfac...

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