Words by Perry Mack
Growing up Dad said, ‘You can’t have it all. Life is about making compromises.’ That might be true, but that doesn’t mean we have to stop trying to have it all. The trick with having a daily driver that is also a competent trail and overland rig, is finding the aftermarket tires, gear and accessories to ‘have it all’.
A great off-road tire offers traction in the dirt and sand, has a tread pattern that clears mud and snow, is tough enough to crawl over sharp rocks without damage, provides a nice bulge when you air down, has a sidewall that can take hits from rocks and stumps while helping you crawl out of ruts. It’s a tire in a red cape and blue tights whose Kryptonite is pavement.
Perry Mack
Look closely at the shoulder blocks to see the alternating scalloped edges.
An on-road tire is quiet travelling down the highway, and provides grip on dry, wet and icy surfaces and has a firm tread design for excellent braking and handling. Unfortunately, features that make a great off-road tire make a terrible on-road tire. Large open tread spaces and a wide tire that provide traction in mud and dirt are typically noisy with a rough ride on the pavement. Large spaces between tread blocks can flex decreasing braking and steering performance, and cause faster tire wear.
Our test tires are LT285/70R17 wrapped around Rugged Ridge XHD 17x9 wheels mounted to our 2015 Wrangler JK Unlimited weighing in at 2290 kg (5048 lb). This size of tire is 11.5” wide, is a 10-ply load range E and weighs in at 23.5 kg (51.8 lb).
Perry Mack
Deep sticky an wet cement-like snow
The Terra Grappler G2 AW is a light duty truck tire designed for the daily driver that tackles off-road trails in every season of the year. Their winter grip qualifies them for the Mountain Snowflake designation ‘Severe Snow and Winter Traction’, which includes snow covered slippery and freezing roads. The rubber compound is designed not to become hard at freezing temperatures, which occurs with typical ‘all-season’ rated tires. The G2 AW also wears the less stringent all-weather M+S badging indicating it’s good in packed snow and mud.
These features were key as we started our review on dry pavement in early April, climbing the up into the Monashee Mountains over dry dirt roads to muddy meltwater, which then quickly morphed to heavy, wet snow and ice. The road conditions were constantly changing and sometimes the tires were each dealing with a different surface simultaneously.
Perry Mack
Raised sidewall details for extra traction when going deep.
Engineers have to be innovative to get everything into the tire that we want. We’re not tire engineers so we don’t care how it gets done, as long as it gets done. The best of everything all the time like the competing forces of good and evil across all surface conditions.
What we do know is that Nitto has balanced the tread to void ratio so you get good debris clearance while maintaining good handling on-road through the use of coupling joints.
Siping is incorporated into virtually all tires nowadays and is a great design feature that improves wet and ice traction. Recent developments have allowed Nitto to make them full depth, which means your traction is maintained throughout the tires’ life.
Perry Mack
Tread voids clear the snow ready for the next round.
Wet traction is also dependent on preventing hydroplaning by shunting water out from the under tire, which is why the G2 AW has lateral treads working in conjunction with the deep sipes. The tread pattern certainly works. Crossing the Coast Mountains on the Coq (the Coquihalla Highway from TV’s Highway to Hell) can mean driving in blinding snowstorms, torrential rains, sunshine or varying degrees of any combination of these road conditions on any given trip. On this highway, British Columbia legislates winter rated tires or carrying chains from October 1 to April 30. Exactly half of the year requires a serious winter rated tire, which means the G2’s Mountain Snowflake rating is a need, not a want, in a tire you can use all year.
Perry Mack
Water, snow, mud and ice - a smorgasbord of road conditions
On our drive from Kelowna to Vancouver and back on the same day in late April (almost 800 km round trip), the Coq delivered sunshine, wet snow and heavy rain. Driving the speed limit through all conditions (often at 120 km/h) the tires did an incredible job of providing solid handling. Passing semi-trailers downhill at highway speeds in the pounding rain can be a suddenly harrowing experience when the rain and added spray from the semitrailer unexpectedly blind you, leaving you to drive through unseen run-off trusting that your tires will keep you on the road until you get to the other side. We now know and trust the Nitto’s to keep us safe as we never experienced any hydroplaning, and always had good control, braking and turning safely through changing weather conditions.
1 of 2
Perry Mack
Great grip on wet roads at highway speeds.
2 of 2
Perry Mack
Logging trucks, transport trucks and avalanche areas - all in a days drive.
The aggressive tread pattern does make the tire slightly louder on the road than an all-terrain tire like the Toyo Open Country A/T II AW we tested before mounting the Terra Grappler G2 AW but nowhere near the same noise generated by dedicated mud terrain or other hybrid cross all-/mud-terrain tires we’ve tested. In our Jeep you only notice the increased ride noise up to 60 kph (37 mph), after which the wind noise in the Wrangler JKU makes tire noise inconsequential.
Alternating scalloped shoulder lugs gave us the off-road traction we needed in the heavy snow and the ability to climb out of the ruts of dirt and snow as we searched for less severe lines crawling up the mountain through trenches created by meltwater. The meltwater had cut through the snow where previous trucks had gone to the mud and gravel underneath creating canyons deep enough that our differentials scraped across snow and ice threatening to halt our progress up the mountain. After reaching the level trail, the conditions were still unpredictable as we moved from icy shadowed paths to sunlit sections of slippery, cement-heavy snow – all while fully aired up. After a quick lunch while enjoying the awe-inspiring views it was time to head home, avoiding cliff-side wash outs that are inviting shortcuts but have rather permanent ends.
Perry Mack
A winning all road conditions tread pattern.
It’s too soon to tell how well the tires wear but Nitto backs the Grappler G2 AW with an 80,000 km limited tread wear warranty on LT-metric sizes and 100,000 km for the P-metric.
Our initial test of these Nitto’s took us on over 2,000 kms of road and trail and never left us wanting more. For the driver who wants a top performing winter rated tire for on- and off-road use, and wants more traction than an all-terrain can give, the Nitto Terra Grappler G2 AW is a solid proven choice.