We got our grubby little hands on a set of the newest Pro Comp all-terrain tires to give them a whirl. We got them in the 315/75 R16 flavor and mounted them on a set of Pro Comp's new aluminum rims. We opted for the 7023 in a 16x8 with its cast blast black finish for easy cleanup. As if that wasn't enough, we then mounted them up on our project Comanche and beat on them for several thousand miles.
On our shortbed Comanche, we ended up running 18 psi in the rear and 21 psi for the front tires to get a flat contact patch on-road. After we had the pressure dialed in, we drove them for about 1,000 miles to break them in before we started playing around off-road.
How They Work
As might be expected from an all-terrain, they were quiet on the street and handled just fine. One odd thing about these tires is that they are a directional tread. While putting them on the MJ backward didn't make them any noisier, we decided to run them the way they should be run.
Surprisingly, for a few days of our testing, sunny Southern California wasn't so sunny, and we were able to log some miles in the rain. Granted, they had only 1,000 to 1,500 miles on them when we were playing in the rain, but they performed excellent. For an all-terrain tire, they acted more like a tire made for wet weather traction. We were still able to get them to hydroplane if we tried, but for the most part they behaved well. We were able to break them loose on acceleration, thanks to dumping the clutch, but they wouldn't lock up in panic stop situations. We attribute that to the siping throughout the tread of the tire. What's more is that at least half of the sipes go almost to the full tread depth, so this performance should keep up for the life of the tire.
While we had rain, we also had mud to play in, and these tires simply don't do well in mud. The shoulders clean out with some wheel speed but it just isn't enough to maintain forward progress. Only with excessive wheel speed were we able to get them to clean out a little bit.
We did get a chance to test them out in some rocks, but we didn't do anything extreme with them. After airing them down to 9 psi in the front and 6 psi in the rear, we were able to get the tires to wrap around rocks with ease. Thanks to the three-ply tread and shoulder blocks, the tires emerged unscathed.
In sand and loose, dry dirt, they did fine both at our street pressure and at our rock pressure. Sand and dry dirt clears out fine, and the Extreme ATs aren't so aggressive as to dig toward the center of the Earth.
The other thing we got quite a bit of messing around with was high-speed fire trails and desert trails at street pressure running anywhere from 40 to 60 mph. After some good runs over wash board and rock-littered trails, we didn't get any golf-ball size blemishes, chunking, or sidewall damage.
Bottom Line
The Pro Comp Extreme ATs are a great tire if most of your Jeeping doesn't involve mud or serious rockcrawling. Ours were a D-load range, but they didn't ride rough at all. They are a directional tread, so spare-tire options might get interesting, but they are also the best AT this writer has messed with on wet roads so far.