1600 http://www.4X4australia.com.auC
OMING from a racing background,
I was pretty excited to fit a set of
the new Mickey Thompson Deegan
38s – named after legendary MotoX,
RallyX and off-road racing champion
Brian Deegan – to my two-door Series 1
Land Rover Discovery.
Rolling a set of Deegans on my old
Disco was never going to turn it into a
racing truck, but I needed something less
aggressive than the mud terrains I was
replacing. The new rubber needed to be
quieter for long-distance tarmac driving,
and they needed to grip in the dirt when
in low range.
Mickey Thompson’s all-terrain Deegan
38 seemed to be the right fit, with its
tough, high-tensile two-ply body cord
sidewalls for increased durability, deep,
open-void tread pattern, and angledshoulder scallops with a two-pitched
side-biter pattern for off-road traction.
The tall, square-edged (with minimal
sidewall) construction gives the Deegans
a race-ready and modern style, and they’d
be a pretty good look on something like
a modern Ranger, BT-50 or Hilux – they
perked up my old bus.
The first thing I noticed on-road was
how quiet and smooth these tyres are –
my old Disco is pretty loose, but it never
felt so smooth or tracked so straight. I was
also surprised by how well they cornered
in the wet. The Disco is a pre-swaybar
model, so I was able to put that to good
test and never lost traction, even under
brakes. Off-road, the deep tread holds
well and, even at road pressure, I was
able to get the tyres to bag due to the
square edges. Even though I’m runningthe standard LT225/75 R16 size, it feels
like I’m running a much wider tyre due
to the tread running edge to edge. And,
with a silica-reinforced compound, tread
durability seems great – even after a
couple of runs up the challenging Rocky
Track in Toolangi, Victoria, there were no
cuts or chips.
The square edges and the minimal-but-
offset sidewall tread-blocks were able to
extract me from clay, muddy ruts on my
most recent fishing trip, and with a little
squirt of the throttle I was able to clear
the mud from the deep tread.
I’m looking forward to putting
the Deegans to the test on some upcoming
longer trips. The silica-reinforced tread
compound should see good longevity, but
I’m just happy to have a smoother, quieter
and easier-to-handle old truck.gear
PRODUCT TEST – MICKEY THOMPSON DEEGAN 38 TYRESRunning standard LT225/75
R16s, the tyre felt wider courtesy
of the edge-to-edge tread.WORDS
MICK HURREN
M/T DEEGAN TYRES
HUGE EXPECTATIONS FOR A TYRE BEARING THE NAME OF AN OFF-ROAD
RACING LEGEND.AVAILABLE FROM:
mickeythompsontires.
com.au
RRP: N/A
WE SAY: Worthy of the
Deegan name.RATED