The Kenda Klever RT is a solid off road tire, where the RT in it’s name stands for Rugged Terrain, meaning the tire is a hybrid, carrying bulky shoulder lugs of a mud terrain tire and central blocks having features of all terrain.
Being a tire designer, it’s performance matched my theory when I studied this tire’s structure. The Kenda Klever R/T provides you with a very strong 3 ply sidewalls, with thick lugs on top and staggered shoulder blocks. All of these help make this tire one of the best ones out there on rough paths especially on rocks. On highways, however, you would have to compromise a little bit, but I guess that can be overlooked considering it’s a budget pick, providing a good value overall.
Table of Contents
Sizes Specs
Kenda Klever R/T comes in a total sizes of 33, where it offers between 15 to 24 inches (rim sizes).
For Your Info: Only one is available in 16 inches: LT235/70R16, and none are available in 19 inches.
Powerful load ratings are available in C, D, E, F, while the speed ratings are available in either Q or R.
Learn all about speed ratings here.
Lastly taking about tread depth, half of the sizes come with 17/32″, while the other half come with 19/32″.
Tread Appearance
RT (rugged terrain) tires are pretty aggressive, and the Kenda Klever RT is no exception.
Let’s start with it’s shoulder blocks and go towards the middle.
On sidewalls, the tire offers good enough lugs, and they cover a good real estate, increasing overall tread print capability when pressured down.
The shoulder blocks are staggered and have wild gaps in between where stone ejectors are also seen.
These stone ejectors are after every block and they vary in shape slightly, consecutively.
All these blocks have straight horizontal full depth sipes, they are not too many in number and only a few on shoulders have an interlocking design.
Moreover, all shoulder blocks have stud-able lugs (for improving winter traction).
Dividing with wide circumferential grooves, the middle area of the tread carry 4 ribs surrounding each other and making an X shaped grooves.
These X shaped grooves are although not as wide as the outer channels, they are still pretty broad for even a rugged terrain tire.
In other words, the tire is more aligned towards mud terrain (and that explains it’s mud performance, as you’ll see).
Here besides the 2 sideways ribs having full depth notches, all carry similar features with similar horizontal siping (again full depth).
Durability
Durability is based on the tire’s internal make-up, and the rubber composition on top, so let’s talk about these first.
The Kenda Klever R/T forms a very robust architecture with a base casing of 3 ply polyester.
This casing gets strengthened with belts made out of steel, and 2 of those run on top, which further get layered with 2 more plies of nylon (cap plies) on which the chip resistant rubber sits.
So the tire provides quite some durability.
Moreover, Klever RT also has a strong bead protecting shields on the sidewalls which further adds to it’s toughness.
On Road Performance
On pavements, the traction is mostly considered with 3 things in mind, the tire’s response, the grip, and handling capabilities.
Let’s talk about both of these one by one.
Steering Response
Being an RT, the steering response suffers a little bit, as the tire under steers slightly, creating a lag between the input and the tire’s feedback, so the wheels communication becomes limited.
But this is seen more on wet tarmacs compared to dry.
As in dry conditions, with minimal tread features on outer blocks, Kenda provides satisfactory lateral traction, improving response times by a lot.
Additionally, it’s deep biters also provide a good amount of lateral stability, as it becomes quite vocual with the steering, but only at slower speeds, that’s because going above 40 mph, you are going to start feeling these tires a lot.
Traction on dry roads
The dry grip of a tire is conditional on the treads exposure with the surface. The more the tire meets the road, the better the friction, which means better grip.
In case of Kenda Klever R/T, the tire does not offer considerable contact patch with the road, so the overall grip is limited.
The tread void of the tire is almost as large as of any mud terrain tires, so very less rubber meets the road.
Dry highway Handling
The handling of the tire depends on the sides. That’s because when tire rolls on corners, most of the weight is put on there, and a firm contact with the road is made.
Now although the Kenda Klever R/T has very wide lateral grooves here, the tire still makes a good enough traction (for a R/T), as it’s shoulder blocks have minimal tread features.
Moreover, the staggered design also provides biters which aids things further.
Wet Performance
Wet performance is divided in to two parts, where one is the wet grip which depends on the tread’s construction and the overall siping.
And the second, is hydroplaning. Let’s talk these both.
Wet Traction
The Kenda Klever R/T provides all weather rubber having a nice mixture of silica in it’s new gen tread. This provides this tire with the needed stretchability.
So slits of the sipes get to open and close smoothly, slurping water in and showering it out as the tire moves over.
But still the tire’s wet grip is not good enough, as there aren’t many sipes on it’s tread. So you are going to face a lot of slippage.
Moreover, the straight siping are not as effective as during braking and handling these sipes become rigid and don’t provide efficient water cleaning, so don’t drive this tire without your traction control off.
Hydroplaning
Hydroplaning is when a tire floats on water and its a crucial part of overall wet traction.
To avoid this, grooves are made on the tread which provide channels for water to leave out.
In case of Kenda Klever R/T the tire has wide enough interconnected grooves from where water can effortlessly pass through.
So the tire offers good enough float speeds (compared to other R/T tires).
For folks who still did not understand float speeds, it’s just the max speed with which tire can roll over water without “floating”.
Snow Performance
Kenda Klever R/T is not 3 peak mountain snowflake rated, but that does not mean it can’t perform well on snowy terrains, as this is only a snow acceleration rating and it has nothing to do with handling and grip.
So although the tire does have a hard time on light snow, on deeper snow, it performs decent traction, as with wider grooves, it’s able to trap in a lot of snow, which get further packed in by the tire’s bulky weight.
So the tire is able to make snow to snow contact (which provides better friction, and hence traction).
Moreover, you can also enhance the traction further (on ice and snow) by adding studs on the shoulders, where you can add 15 of these.
Ride Quality
As the tire tends to get more aggressive, it’s on road comfort starts to become limited, that’s why the on road tires (like all season and touring tires), provide you with the most comfortable ride.
Then comes all terrain tires, which are more aggressive then passenger tires, but not as much as the mud tires.
The R/T tires, like the Kenda Klever RT, come right in the middle of these two, all terrain and mud terrain, so the comfort of this tire, where its better compared to a mud tire, is still not as good as an all terrain tire.
Now, having said that, let’s discuss it’s noise and comfort.
Comfort
Comfort of the ride simply put, is dependent on the tire’s ability to soak up the bumps. So here the tire’s structure is considered. If a tire is stiff, you would really feel the road underneath, and if it’s soft the bumps would get dissipated off nicely, but then again softer tread also becomes prone to wear, so companies have to find a nice balance in between.
The Kenda Klever R/T although yields a rigid 3 ply ester construction, it still attributes a softer rubber layer on top, which provides a good enough job of absorbing the imperfections of the road nicely.
With a decent tread depth (which puts a thicker rubber layer on top), the tire also provides nice off road comfort levels as well.
Tread Noise
Noise is just air particles hiring the walls of tread voids, and mostly this air comes in from the shoulders.
Now since the Kenda Klever R/T offers a lot of gaps there, there is a lot of real estate area for air to move around and hit the walls with more force.
And although the tire offers variable pitch technology, it’s still not able to dampen the noise effective (this technology basically provides variations in the tread which makes different sound frequencies, and they try to cancel out each other).
For Your Info: Most comfortable all terrain tire in my experience is the Yokohama Geolandar G015 (review).
Off Road Traction
The Kenda Klever R/T is a beast off-road, handling tough terrains like mud, rocks, and sand with ease.
Firstly, I’d like to say that this tire a serious contender for rock crawling. Its staggered shoulders and sidewall lugs provide incredible grip, especially when you air down.
So it’s right up there with top hybrids like the Nitto Ridge Grappler and Mickey Thompson Baja Boss AT.
Moreover, the tire also excels in mud, thanks to its wide grooves and lateral gaps that clear mud quickly. Plus its staggered shoulders help here as well, pushing mud backward, keeping the tread clean and maintaining forward momentum.
And yes its also good enough on sand too.
Sure, its weight can be a drawback particularly on slopes, but airing down improves its footprint and traction. Plus, its strong rim locks let you drop pressure without worrying about the bead rolling off.
Lastly, leave with this
The Kenda Klever R/T comes right in the middle of All Terrain and Mud Terrain tires, so the tire is also called a hybrid besides Rugged Terrain.
Other popular tires in the RT category include Duratrac, Nitto Ridge Grappler and Toyo RT, and compared to these all, this tire provide satisfactory dry grip but lacks on wet pavements.
Klever RT is also not 3PMSF rated but offers good traction on deeper snow which can be enhanced with its stud-able lugs .
Lastly, talking of comfort, it’s okay-ish, if you can bear the noise.
