I am looking for new AT tires, I have looked at the BFG All Terrain KO's, Nitto Terra Grapplers, and Goodyear Duratracs. I live on a gravel road so dont want a tire that throws rocks.

I have heard the BFG's are bad for this but looking for real world experiences.

Any recommendations?

 

none, unless they are just a renamed daily driver tire.

 

Last Sept I bought a new set of Cooper Discoverer AT3's for my truck. I have property in West Virginia that is on top of a mountain. The main road going back to the properties is gravel. The main common lane going up the mountain side (which I partialy own), has an average incline of about 7-8 degrees for about 1/4 mile, and midway has a region at about a 13 degree incline. It's a shale/gravel mix. Once I hit my main lane going down to the trailer, it's a shale/hard clay mix. These tires do great! They hardly ever retain stones. They do throw some when it gets real loose tho. On my property on the other side, I had the road scraped, widened and had a shale/stone mix layed going up the mountain. It does have a steep incline going up. And then when you get to the woods it's just been scrapped and widened a bit. It hardly ever throws anything there. When I finally get back onto a paved road I here a few get thrown under the truck for a little while but that's it. I know it will vary on different surfaces, but I like how these tires perform on all services, and they are very stable. Hope that helps...

 

I had BFG AT's on an S-10 ZR-2... Sweet looking truck, but poor build quality... It got me hooked on Ford once I sold it. Anyways, yes the BFG AT's do spit up rocks, at least the non-KO tires I had did. You could put mud flaps on and you should be safe. I see nerf bars in the picture used in your signature and those should be good enough to protect the front, but it'll chip away at the chrome on the nerf bars. I don't know what to tell you to do, but I'm pretty sure any all-terrain tire will throw rocks. Mud flaps are ugly when on the front, but I think that would be your only way to have an all-terrain tire and not worry about paint chipping off. Wait a sec, you could always move...

If BFG AT's spit up rocks, I can't wait to see the boulders that will be thrown by the BFG MT's waiting to be mounted on my Expedition.

 

See, that's the thing…they won't. The voids are large enough in most mud tires that the rocks and pebbles you're accustomed to getting slung all over the place just don't get caught up in there. The voids and sipeing (sp?) in AT tires are tight enough that rocks get stuck in there. Then they stay there until centrifugal force overcomes their ability to stay stuck and thus they sling out all over everything. If you ever looked down the side of my truck with MT's on it for the majority of its life, you'd be amazed at the absence of rock chips.

With that said, I did have a pretty boring stint with the Nitto Terra Grapplers and I don't recall a rock problem with them.

 

My nitto terra grapplers catch a stone every once im awhile and i can hear it smack off the bottom of my truck when it works free. But for the most part it doesnt throw rocks too bad.

 

My maxxis bighorns never threw rocks but my Nitto crosstek HD's sure do.

 

I second these tires! Got them a few weeks ago and have driven on a good bit of gravel, hardly any stones get thrown. I've noticed that rocks also don't get stuck in the treads. At3's have my vote.

 

I had BFG KOs on my jeep and they threw more rocks than any other tire I have ever owned.

 

The BFG TA/KO's I had were great tires except for them throwing rock's. The Nitto Terra's I have now are not bad at all.

 

My Kelly TSRs are not too bad for throwing rocks. They have fairly large spacing between tread blocks, so they only seem to pick up larger stones. Just about any tire will pick up stones depending on size. Even my wifes CRV ( Michelin Latitude Tour) occasionally picks up stones on gravel roads.