My Michelin Defender LTX MS’s served me faithful 60,000 miles, of which a significant portion of it was spent towing. To be fair, it probably shouldn’t have seen the last 5,000 miles, but given I wasn’t going to see snow for a few months at that time, I decided to wait until Black Friday 2024.

I typically like to experiment with highly well rated cheaper tires, I decided to go Michelin again for this round, with the newly updated Michelin Defender LTX MS2’s. There are key improvements, including both wet and dry performance handling, higher tread life (820 vs 800), and Michelin’s “Comfort Control” technology. I’ve only been driving it around for a short while now, but the improvement in comfort and noise was immediate. Granted, I was on extremely used tires just before this, but still good to note. I purchased brand new lug nuts for the Sequoia, a first since I’ve owned the car. The old lug nuts were extremely beat, not all were the same, and most had rust.

Tires were purchased through Costco and installation was free. Tires bought from Costco come with a 5 year road hazard warranty, and lifetime rotation, balancing, repairs, etc. Given that I got brand new tires, the next thing I wanted to get was an alignment – I knew it was going to be bad and I wanted these tires to last as long as possible.