Tire sizes - Honker 2000

Very often we get questions about wheel sizes for 2000 honkers.

Tires in the typical military size of 7.5R16 are recommended for the 2000 honker (tires in these sizes are also used by other armies, such as in military landrovers defenders, etc.). Goodyear G90 and Michelin XZL tires are used interchangeably.

We, too, think that this is the best tire size for the 2000 honker. The car on them maintains decent performance, off-road efficiency and looks proportional.

Our experience indicates that the optimal tire for our off-road conditions is the Michelin brand, unfortunately it is slightly more expensive than the tire manufactured by Goodyear. The G90 model performs well in sandy terrain for that it performs slightly worse than the XZL in mud. However, it should be assumed that both tires perform quite decently with military honkers, which move rather in moderate terrain. 

Although tires of this size seem narrow, they do well on honkers that do not have much power reserve. Wearing wider and larger tires, in addition to improving appearance, very often results in a drastic drop in vehicle performance.

However, a lot of people, for economic reasons, opt for tires on 15″ rims (e.g. 235/75R15) - such a set is actually twice the price of the factory recommended size. Quite a common practice of honker dealers is to remove the original, sought-after wheels on 16″(for resale) and replace them with much cheaper ones on 15″. 

So we illustrate pictorially what the effect of using such wheels is.

A not-insignificant honker on such too-small wheels looks like a "roller-skater" - this is the term that works in our group, and it describes precisely these shaky proportions of the car.

Below is a comparison of the honkers on factory recommended 16″ rims with Michelin XZL/Goodyear G90 tires in size 7.5R16 and on 15″ rims with BFG MT tires in size 235/75R15. Judge the visual effect for yourself.