</font><font color="blue" class="small">( Terrain is important, but surface is also. If you are and paved or hard packed (stone drives, etc.) AG tires will have a very short life they are designed to dig for traction which won't happen on pavement the result will be fast tire wear. The R4's are made to little of everything and are 90% of what my customers choose )</font>
I agree with Pete and respectfully disagree with you. I've had R4's and R1's as well as Galaxy tires on my tractors. Galaxy's are fine for mowing grass but have about as much traction on wet ground or mud as baldies.
R4's do wear longer on pavement than R1's but the difference would not be noticed by 90% of tractor owners, especially if one is careful about how they actually drive the tractor on hard surfaces. If one is cautious about the application of R1's on pavement or hard surfaces I don't believe there is much difference. I'm biased to radial R1's (play on words /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif) in as much as the radial carcass has more sidewall flex and allows the bars to better contact the ground thus you have less slippage and longer tire wear.
Obviously "cautious" is no FWA on pavement, no brake steering no spinning the drive tires....just drive sensibly.
R4's give the illusion of more traction and a "beefier" tire because of the substaintially wider bars, but the shape of the bars as well as the height and the angle of the bar in relation to the plane of the tractor is what attributes to traction, not the apparent width of the bar. Besides, the R4 tire has little ability to "clean" itself of mud and debris because the bar can't flex.
While R4's are a good all around tire, when you need traction and a self cleaning tire, the R1 is the only way to fly.
