Nitto Terra Grappler G2 is an all terrain tire made for pickup trucks, Jeeps, crossovers and recreational light trucks. The tire offers a decent balance between on and off road, and now with the upgraded version, it comes with latest generation tread and 3PMSF rating (that’s why its named G2, which is the abbreviation for 2nd generation).
Being a tire engineer, in my opinion, the Nitto Terra Grappler provides a good on road experience but only on dry roads, as the tire’s siping is not too effective on wet. They are actually for optimized for snow, that’s why the tire earns 3PMSFR. Moreover, the off road performance of the tire is going to impress. It provides sufficient biters for on road, gravely roads and lands filled with dirt.
Sizes Specs
Nitto Terra Grappler G2 comes in between 17 to 24 inches.
The tire offers great speed ratings going up to H, where other sizes are also available in R,S and T.
Load ratings are also available with a wide range, where sizes are sen with SL, XL, D, E and even F (which is the top most).
So weight of the tire also has a lot of range as it goes from 30 lbs and goes up to 80.
Tread depth goes from 12 to 17/32″.
All sizes show a good tread life, and have the UTQG rating of 600 A B (for all). The tire also offers 65k miles warranty (for P metric), while others come with 50k miles warranty.
Tread Features
Like all Grapplers, the Nitto Terra Grappler also features two bold sidewall designs, a variable pitch tread and full depth siping that last a long time.
See other brothers of Terra Grappler:
- Recon Grappler: https://tiredriver.com/nitto-recon-grappler-review/
- Ridge Grappler: https://tiredriver.com/nitto-ridge-grappler-review/
- Trail Grappler: https://tiredriver.com/nitto-trail-grappler-mt-review/
Let’s talk about tread, starting from the middle.
The middle section of this tire is consisting of 3 main ribs, where you can see sharped edges (chamfered), notches and deep slits of sipes.
These sipes are although interlocking and go all the way deep, the are very small to provide ample traction on wet, but still great for snow.
Together these ribs make 4 circumferential channels where the inner two are not as wide, but still very sharp.
The outer are rugged as they make block valleys of notches from both sides.
The shoulder blocks carry similar features but towards sidewalls they are staggered.
Also one more thing, the sidewalls although make different design on each side, it’s lugs there are not thick enough to provide off road biting (when tire pressure is lowered).
Compare Nitto Terra Grappler with others
- Nitto Recon Grappler
- Toyo Open Country AT3
- Cooper Discoverer AT3
- BF Goodrich KO2
- Nitto Ridge Grappler
- Hankook Dynapro A/T2
- General Grabber A/TX
Durability
All terrain tires are tough because their treads are not the main part of their durability. The main part of their durability is their inner construction.
This tire is made up of a number of different pieces that work together to provide good traction on a variety of surfaces.
The inside of this tire is made out of polyester. This polyester layer is then layered with two belts made of steel cords. The steel cords have high tensile strength, which means they will help to prevent this tire from getting punctured from the middle.
These belts in case of Terra Grappler also have two more polyester layers on top, made out of nylon, adding reinforcements.
So overall the tire makes 2 ply sides, where the middle section with more no. of plies get to have 2+2+2 construction (which is mostly the norm with these AT tires).
Highway Performance
With blocky heavy duty tread design, it’s expected that the tire would compromise a little on it’s steering response and traction (which consists of grip and handling).
These are all on road performance factors, and we are going to look at them one by one.
Steering Response
Overall, the Nitto Terra Grappler AT, although offers a good enough communication with the steering, it can still be improved.
The asymmetric design of the tire combined with the lugs formation on both in the middle as well as shoulder create a very confusing response, where the steering feels slightly harder turning on one side than the other.
Dry Traction
When it comes to dry traction, there are two factors involved, one is the tire’s ability to corner (measured with lateral G forces), and the other is the grip, which tells you about the directional stability.
With enough biters and a straight forward blocky design, the dry grip overall is not going to be an issue.
The overall rubber to road contact is enough to provide decent values.
This also goes for shoulders which offer a major playing role while the tire corners, and with a closed up design ample contact patch is provided over there as well.
So handling times are also okay.
Performance on Wet Tarmacs
With a voided design, wet surfaces can get challenging for AT tires, though they do offer better hydroplaning which is also crucial for overall wet traction, but there’s also wet grip to consider.
Let’s discuss them both.
Wet Traction
The Nitto Terra Grappler offers a new gen compound now, which has now better silica density in it, that’s why the tire does great on snow now.
But flexibility alone is not enough here, the siping design is also very crucial, and Terra Grappler offers where short siping which don’t offer better water soaking abilities.
The smaller sipes although offer good gripping, they are not able to clear out the water particles from underneath (which is the main job of sipes).
So the wet traction of this tire is not going to impress.
Hydroplaning
Hydroplaning, is when a tire starts to float on water, and loses its all traction. But this is rarely the case with AT tires as they are properly voided.
So the Nitto Terra Grappler where it provides 4 longitudinal aqua channels interconnected laterally as well, water can easily flow outwards.
So with better resistance to hydroplaning the tire offers above average float speeds.
On Road Noise
On road noise is generated by a lot of factors combined, as there is tire’s rolling noise, then there are various surface textures which create different sound frequencies, there is in groove noise, which is commonly refereed to as tread noise, the list goes on and on. But the goal is the same. To make tire quieter, especially on tarmacs.
For that nearly all tires come up with ptich sequencing, which is marketed by Nitto as Variable pitch technology, (its the same thing).
They do this by varying the block sizes slightly so air hitting them can create a slightly different tone of sound waves. This way they don’t cause any sort of groove resonance and overall sound is dampened.
But still the tire is not the quietest, as its tread is still quite acoustic.
Tread Wear
Nitto Terra Grappler provides a decent resistance to wear, that’s why its able to give out UTQG rating of 600 A B. (To give you an idea, it’s similar to Toyo AT3).
That’s why the tire comes with 50k miles warranty for LT sizes, while others even get 15k more miles.
This is because the tire offers a rigid rubber composition with an elastic make up and with less weight going only up to 80 lbs, the tire does not generate significant rolling resistance.
Also with larger sizes, where the tire gets heavier, it’s tread depth also increases form 12 to 17/32″, so both factors cancel each other out, without limiting the tire’s wear resistance.
Winter Traction
The older version of Nitto Terra Grappler didn’t have full depth siping, and it’s grooves were not optimized for snowy terrains where it’s stiffer rubber was prone to getting more rigid with winter temperatures.
But now with newer tire the Terra Grappler G2, the tire focused a lot on winter traction, earning it the 3 peak mountain snowflake rating symbol.
It’s sipes are although not as capable on wet roads, they sure are great for snow.
And it’s notches everywhere especially on the outer longitudinal channels are very good at hanging on to the snow and providing a great friction with snowball effect (where the trapped snow in grooves sticks better on ground snow, enhancing friction).
Rocky Areas
On rocks the Nitto Terra Grappler is slightly below average. Although the tire provides dual sidewalls, it’s lugs there are not chunkier enough to bite the ground (especially when you air down the tire).
The 2 ply sides of the tire is also weaker for sharp encounters.
But with staggered shoulders and notches with mouths opening on all sides, the tire does okay on lighter terrains.
Muddy Areas
Mud is not all terrain tire friendly. So Nitto Terra Grappler is not impressive here at all. But it’s larger sizes get slightly better as they offer a slightly better twisting middle lugs with the tire’s asymmetric design.
This way the tire can move mud laterally.
But overall, don’t expect them still to take on deeper terrains.
Sand
The Nitto Terra Grappler offers a harder compound which even with lowered PSI, does not offer a good footprint with the sand, which is highly needed.
The tire with heavier 2 cap plies sitting of wide steel belts also makes things poor for the tire.
And like seen, it’s lugs aren’t thick enough to cause a paddling effect on soft terrains.
Conclusion:
With newer generation, the Nitto Terra Grappler although has improved a lot of things, but while improving it’s snow traction, the company did not focus too much on it’s wet capabilities, and the tire lacks there.
I personally have no complaints off road, well except for sand, as these tires aren’t that capable off road anyways.
Nonetheless, the tire now performs great on snow, and is very impressive over there and that can be expected with it’s 3pmsf rating symbol on its sidewalls.
