Mud tires on the street

The off road or 4x4 tires comes in various types depending on the use its intended for. Mainly they are classified in to three types

1. H/T - means Highway Terrain : build for the smooth roads
2. A/T - means All Terrain : Build for both highway and off road. The tread patterns are more aggressive than the H/T tires. Some AT tires tends to sway towards the street and some towards off road
   
3. M/T - means Mud Terrain. Also Called Mud Tires. These tires are build with off roading in mind with deep grooves and aggressive thread patterns.

Recently my supplier delivered me a set of Mud Tires when I ordered All Terrain Tires. They were awesome. Deep and aggressive thread patterns looked so great. So I faced the universal problem of all 4x4 owners who primarily use the vehicle on road. How suitable is a mud tire for street use. After speaking to some friends who use mud tires and going through a lot of internet discussions I could come up with some pros and cons of mud tires on street use.

Cons	Pros
The tires make a loud noise similar to a hum when driving on the street.	They look awesome on my 4x4
Deeper and wider gaps between the lugs means that the total surface areas which touches the road (footprint on the road) any time is lower than ATs and HTs. Therefore under bad weather conditions it might perform worse than ATs and HTs	They look awesome on my 4x4
The lugs are made of softer material than the other types of tires thus it will wear down faster than the ATs and HTs on street use.	They look awesome on my 4x4

So the final conclusion ? Call the guy and ask him to deliver my All Terrain tires and return the mud tires

making sense of tyre sizes

I am having to change my jeep tyres for the first time and I am now facing the universal problem of what tire?

Well, my jeep is having a tyre size of 31X10.50R15. This is not the conventional tyre sizes in mm. This sizing convention was new to me. So I dug in to figure out that this means. This is how it works

Let’s take the tyre size 31x10.50R15.
31 – Stands for the height of the tire in inches

10.5 – width is the tire in inches

15 – Stands for the rim size again in inches

So there is nothing to it. So how do you find the height of the sidewall?

Rim + (2 x sidewall) = height
Sidewall = (height – rim) /2
In this case its 8 inches ((31-15)/2)

But how does this convert to the conventional tire sizes? To do this we need to understand the how conventional tire sizes are read. Let’s take a similar tire 265/75R15

265 - Stands for the tire width in mm

75 – Which really means 75% is the tyre aspect ratio. This is basically the ratio of sidewall divided by width. Therefore to find the absolute sidewall height

Aspect ratio = sidewall / width
Sidewall = aspect ratio * width = 75% * 265 = 198.75 mm (7.82 inches)

15 - Stands for the RIM size in inches

Download this excel sheet to try the conversion with other sizes.