Cedric, you know how I cry every time we go offroad about the KL71's that I have no more. I think they are the best thing since sliced bread. At that very fun day (Northwest Nissan) if we are talking about the same one. I "convinced" sold three sets of tyres for Lombards tyres in Roodepoort. They gave me a T-shirt and Cap for my effort ( A set of KL71's would have been welcome, but you can't be greedy now
)...
I came upon the KL71's by accident when my old wrangler and ATX combination was frustrating me. I thought I would save them for the SJ410 we were building up. I went searching for tyres and Theuhan referred me to Koos at Lombards and the KL71 came in at the cheapest tyre on the market at R1020 fitted each. The BF245's MT were already at 2600 each and the ATX AT's were 1700 each.
These 31" MT's were not actually my first choice as they were directional and that had me slightly scared.
These tyres also stopped my plans for the diffloc I was wanting. While I had them on, I can recall only two instances that I managed to get stuck, and believe me, we tried. I even took a trip to Kallies and drove the whole fay in 2wd to try and get stuck. In the mud hole I did manage to grind the alternator to shreds with all the mud.
Wet tar roads are no problem with these tyres. The 31" tyres did eat up my Tierods, but that is a IFS problem on the Hardbodies. I managed 86K km on the KL's and dumped them with 6mm of tread in some places, but the edges were smooth from bad wheel alignment. In 86K km I had one puncture that came from one of my own tek screws on a site.
I did put a 2" long gash in the side wall of one of them just a week or two after fitting and was advised on the community forum that the tyre is FUBAR and dangerous and that I should replace it immediately and may keep it as a spare. I never did and never had a problem with it.
These tyres just took all the guess work out of "where should I drive, what line should I take, hope nothing will cut or puncture my tyre" and just point and squirt (if that is even possible with a mere 2.7 donkey
). I drove on sites and fields where we would regularly find metal bits and glass laying around. Maybe I was just very lucky, but these tyres just did everything and more I ever needed them to do.
I even ran the front tyres in reverse for 20K km to try and get a few kilos extra out of them and they still performed well.
They were my biggest tyres I ever had on the Sani, and I did expect some balancing issues, but this turned out to be no problem compared to just about any other make I have had on Hillbilly.
Will I use them again, HELL YES
.
I can't compare them to other MT's as I have never had other MT's on Hillbilly. The road noise on tar was there, but nothing a good Sony could not drown out.
One of the most memorable times on these tyres was a trip to Cape Town along close on 500km of gravel. When I hit the Gravel just other side of Kinberley, I dropped the pressure to 1,3Bar. The Sani drove like a dream on that gravel. Felt better and and even quieter than when we are on tar. Grip was amazing and I had to caution my wife, who is usually a very conservative driver, to slow down to 100km/h.
I can't fault these tyres even if I tried. I really pulled them through my proverbial and they came out smelling like roses.
