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f you live in the drought-stricken West, are into off-road racing, or simply like to hot rod along the trails, you undoubtedly noticed that the amount of dust and crud you kick up has markedly increased. Blame it on climate change or those new big knobby tires; you are kicking up a ton of dirt. Unfortunately, while you may enjoy the Indiana Jones effect, your engine doesn’t. All that dust is clogging up your air filter faster, starving the engine of the oxygen it needs to combust the fuel completely. Your fuel efficiency drops, and you’re also spending more on replacement filters.

Fortunately, the aftermarket industry has developed air intake systems that improve or replace OEM systems. Explicitly designed for operating in difficult, dusty environments, these systems can prolong the life of your air filter and keep your engine purring with no loss in fuel efficiency or carbon buildup. If you don’t want to worry about choking out your ride while ripping up Great Bend trails or taking on the Moab, explore these air intake alternatives.

A clean air filter seems like a simple thing, but when your road is sand or dirt, the filter becomes your first line of defense for engine performance. Just like you, your engine requires reasonably clean air to run, and just like you, when that air fills with dust, smoke, or other particulates, it will choke and run less efficiently. There are dozens of air intake solutions. Take the time to check out a few to see how you can increase horsepower and fuel efficiency.

K&N Off-Road In-Line Air Intake System

K&N, a respected name in filters, offers this compact, easy-to-install air intake system designed for off-road racing. The state-of-the-art washable, conical, 6-layer cotton gauze K&N filter provides up to 50% more airflow than disposable paper filters. In addition, the unit is equipped with a foam-wrapped pre-filter, providing outstanding protection in all conditions. In addition, the cylindrical air-intake housing allows excellent airflow in the harshest conditions.

Cold Air Intake by Z1 Off-Road

A steady supply of cold, clean, dense air will greatly improve combustion chamber performance if you are looking for increased horsepower and torque. The Z1 Off-Road system uses an innovative roto-molder polyurethane airbox designed for the Z1 dry-media filter. A rubber grommet affixes the airbox to an inner fender keeping hot air from the engine compartment out. Inside the airbox is the state-of-the-art Z1 filter featuring an integrated velocity stack used to maximize and optimize airflow. Colder, faster airflow means better performance.

S&B Cold Air Intakes

S&B manufactures a number of air intake systems for a wide mix of off-road models. Engineered to increase airflow and minimize air restriction, the signature airbox features a clear lid on the top for easy inspection of the filter and includes a rubber lid seal to keep out performance stealing hot air. Filters are massive 8-layer affairs available in your choice of cleanable or extended media.

Dobinsons Tacoma Snorkle

The Dobinsons Snorkle will reduce dust inhalation, collect cooler air, and allow for safe fording if you have a Toyota Tacoma. An external air intake system, the snorkel is made from high-quality polyurethane in an attractive black design. The height of the snorkel makes it ideal for desert driving by collecting the cooler air from above the dust clouds. Installation is fairly simple, and all hardware required is included in the kit.

Pirelli is a household name that has been around since the early 20th century. Generally associated with high-end and exotic brands, racing teams, and celebrities, Pirelli was never really popular with the bigger market of replacement tires for “ordinary” vehicles. Today, Pirelli still has a stranglehold on exotic brands providing OE rubber for the likes of Aston Martin, Bentley, Ferrari, Porsche, Maserati, Lamborghini, McLaren, and Pagani. But if you are going to get a bigger bite of the tire market, you need to have a replacement tire for Ford, Chevy. RAM, Toyota, and others.

And that’s where the Pirelli Scorpion™ ATR All-Terrain tire comes in.

Pickup trucks are the most popular style of vehicle sold in America today, followed by SUVs and crossovers. The tires Pirelli delivers to their upscale customers have brand-specific characteristics, including compound chemistry, tread design, and even tire markings. What they needed was a replacement tire that would satisfy the broader consumer market.

Pirelli is known for its fanatical attention to research and development. For example, with the proposed new replacement tire, their research showed that even though the vehicles purchased had off-road potential, 95% of new owners would never leave the pavement. That means that most owners wanted ride comfort and tire noise to be equal to or better than the factory while still having an off-road tire’s allure.

In 2020 Pirelli launched the Scorpion ATR, a hybrid between an all-season and all-terrain tire that surprised everyone (including Pirelli) with how well it meets the needs of everyday commuting and off-road challenges, particularly snow and mud.

Pirelli Scorpion™ ATR – Cruising Both Sides of the Road

Keeping in mind that Pirelli wanted to deliver what most people wanted, quiet operation and factory ride, the Scorpion™ seems to lean towards the wants of the 5% who actually take their off-road ride off-road. Pirelli ended up with much more than just an off-road “allure.”

A combination compound and tread design earned the tire a severe cold weather Three Mountain Peak Snowflake rating exhibited every time the rubber meets a moderate snowstorm or rainy, wet pavement. What’s surprising is how well the tire can negotiate mud.

The central tread is a series of blocks shaped like P and S with deep channels, a plethora of sipes, stone ejectors, and biting edges. Shoulder lugs provide additional grip in snow or when operating with low tire pressure. The compound is laceration proof, and the sidewalls are reinforced with ten-ply rubber, providing protection against curb rash and rocks and boulders.

Keeping true to their attention to a “brand specific” approach, there are six variants of the Scorpion™ that range from 14-inch to 24-inches in diameter to fit the specs for a wide range of specific vehicles.

At the end of the day, Pirelli built a tire that behaves like other Pirelli rubber on the pavement, quiet and comfortable with improved traction on wet surfaces. Based on sales, the Scorpion™ ATR is a hit with 95% of off-road enthusiasts who are not practitioners. However, for the 5% who do get their rides dirty, the Scorpion™ ATR is competitive with other brands specializing in all-terrain rubber.

If it is time for new shoes on your truck or SUV, take the time to give the Pirelli a serious look. It has the off-road creds, is a perfect commuter tire, and is currently aggressively priced. Check out our inventory and call us with any questions you may have.

Of course, if you are looking for a performance tire, then we are talking about the renowned P Zero, which is a whole different side of Pirelli and a story for another time.

Forgiato Wheels are the perfect way to give your ride a unique and eye-catching look. The distinctive styling, quality construction, and unique finishes of Forgiato Wheels make them stand out from the crowd. From the classic deep dish five-spoke wheels to the modern-day spinners and chrome wheels, Forgiato Wheels offer a variety of styles to choose from that are sure to give any vehicle an edge in the looks department. From muscle cars to luxury sedans, Forgiato Wheels add that extra bit of style and flair that make them truly special. Whether you’re looking for a set of wheels for your daily driver or a classic set of wheels for a show car, you’ll be sure to find something from Forgiato Wheels that will make your vehicle stand out. With so many stunning designs to choose from, you can be sure to give your ride some serious street cred!

Here are some of our top five favorite new styles from Forgiato Wheels:

If you’re looking for Forgiato Wheels in Houston, American Wheel and Tire is the perfect place to find them. With a huge selection of wheels from all the top brands, you’re sure to find just what you’re looking for. The knowledgeable staff at American Wheel and Tire can help you find the perfect set of wheels for your vehicle, so you can get back on the road in style.

1. Belice-XKW-FF Wheels – Clean, Stylish and luxurious, these five-spoke wheels feature a gold finish with a chrome lip, making them perfect for adding a luxurious yet refined touch to your ride. The graceful shape and intricate details of these wheels will definitely turn heads wherever you go.

2. Flow 001 Wheels – These multi-spoke wheels feature a classic mesh design with a stylish machined finish. The intricate details and unique look of these wheels will give your vehicle an edge in the looks department.

4. Autonomo-M Wheels – These wheels feature an eye-catching directional-spoke design with a matte gold finish. The sleek directional lines and modern styling of these wheels will give your vehicle a distinctive look that is sure to stand out from the crowd.

5. TEC 2.2-R Wheels – These three-piece forged wheels are designed with an intricate spoke pattern and sleek gray and red finish, making them perfect for adding an aggressive yet sporty touch to any car or SUV.

One of the easiest ways to increase the amount of time you have on the trail is to keep going when the sun goes down. Yes, if you are on a narrow track in a heavily forested area, those trees will seem like they are closing in on you when you are driving my moonlight rather than sunlight. And no one will try and crawl a rocky incline in the dark. And if you get stuck, that 9-volt lantern isn’t going to give you all the light you need.

Your OEM headlights and fog lights were meant to light up highways, not dirt tracks or muddy trails. But, adding the right spots, floods, and area lights can open a whole new world of nighttime off-roading. Light kits will give you the confidence to take on the sketchiest trails at night, make rescues easier and faster, and yes, even crawl boulders under the stars. When it comes to light kits, we suggest you take a hard look at the sets from the brand many of our customers swear by, Rough Country. Excellent performance, quality construction, and competitive pricing are the hallmarks of Rough Country, and their light kits are no exception.

While Rough Country is known for its aggressive price points, there are a plethora of lower-cost options. You won’t find them on AWT because we carefully vet the products we represent, and we ensure the brands have demonstrated their willingness and ability to stand behind their warranties and guarantees. Lighting is a field where you can slap some LED components together, quick solder connections, bend some metal and call it a mount, give it a snappy name and call it off-road lighting. Rough Country applies the same high-quality standards to manufacturing their lights as they do for their suspensions and shocks. Their light kits come with all the required wiring and switches to get the system up and running. And they will stay running longer than the bargain brands you can find elsewhere.

Let’s look at some of the lighting options Rough Country offers

Let Rough Country Shine a Light on It

Rough Country has three design themes, Black, Chrome, and X5. The Black Series is our favorite. Sleek black panels blend with all the black accents on your truck, Jeep, or UTV. It has a cleaner, more modern look than the chrome or stylized X5 themes.

Rough Country 20″ Black Series Single Row CREE LED Light Bar

This sleek black light bar compliments your ride’s high beams pumping out 100 watts of LED light (7,200 lumens). As a result, your new light source will punch into the darkness far beyond the current range of your OEM lights. Housed in a durable die-cast aluminum housing, rated ip67 waterproof, and equipped with a technology that reduces moisture build-up behind the lens, the Single Row LED Light Bar can be mounted on your roof, hood, grilles, bumpers, or bull bar. Not the right size? If 20-inches don’t fit your needs, the CREE LED LIGHT BAR comes in 12, 30, 40, and 50-inch sizes.

Rough Country 40″ LED Dual Row Curved Light Bar

This is the big boy. Curved to fit in your grille, this bar combines flood and spotlights, generating 19,200 lumens with 240 watts of power. Floods located at the ends of the bar light up the sides of the trail, making turns on twisty tracks far easier. The spots reach out way farther than your high beam OEM lights. In addition, it comes with a cover making a sleek addition to the grille without significantly restricting airflow to the engine compartment. Backed by a three-year Rough Country guarantee, this light bar is the ultimate Big Light modification.

2-Inch Square CREE LED Flood Lights

Incredibly flexible, these flood cubes can be mounted almost anywhere. Use them to augment your light bar, mount them flush in your grill, and use them as driving lights (available in white and amber light) mount on fenders and flood the rocks and terrain immediately in front of your ride. These are rugged, ip67 rated items with a three-year guarantee like all Rough Country light products.

These are just a few of the dozens of aftermarket light kits available from Rough Country. In addition to the lights, there is an excellent inventory of mounts, brackets, switches, and other accessories available. Contact us and tell us about your vehicle and how you plan to use a light kit. We are happy to recommend a kit that will best meet your needs.

The stars at night are big and bright, deep in the heart of Texas. That may be true, but those stars are not bright enough to safely navigate trails in some of Texas’ best off-road tracks. Like the song says, “the coyotes wail along the trail,” and we’ll guarantee that trail will be pitch black if you’re in Big Bend National Park, River Run, or the Ironwood Trail System at night. If you are into nighttime off-roading, your OEM headlights and fog lights are not enough. You need an off-road light kit to see that coyote (or pothole, mud pit, or fallen tree) along or on the trail.

The right light kit can open up a whole new world of off-road adventuring. Hitting the trail at night is a great way to beat the Texas summer heat, and even the most familiar trails take on a new and exciting look. And with the advances in LED technology, your overnight campsite can be illuminated by your rig with minimal draw on your battery.

Don’t Take Lighting Lightly

Ten years ago, the off-road lighting business was ruled by a half dozen brands offering mostly halogen and high-intensity discharge (HID) lights. LED changed everything. Now there are dozens of companies hyping their products, many of whom, unfortunately, are in a race to the bottom. Cheap LED lights, faulty wiring, and even cheaper mounts abound on eBay and discount parts sites. At AWT, we carefully vet every brand we represent to ensure it will perform as advertised and the company stands behind its warranty or guarantee. We have our favorites, and we will get to them in a minute. But first, you need to know what works best for you.

There is a cornucopia of off-road lights available, including fog lamps, cornering lamps, rock lights, floodlights, driving lights, pencil beams, and spotlights each with different beam patterns. They can come individually mounted or blended to get a mix of beam patterns in a light bar. Which one(s) you need depends mainly on how fast you travel.

If you are a rock crawler, you’re going 0 to 10 mph, and you will need plenty of diffused light immediately in front and all around you. If twisty, winding trails are more your style and you are cruising at 10 to 50 mph, additional driving lights and spots will come in handy for seeing challenges directly in front of you and along the trail sides as well. If you are doing over 50 mph, you are probably on a paved road, and it is important to check with state law regarding the legality of light bars and spots on the highway

Brands You Can Trust

We mentioned we had our favorites. We have several favorites, but these three brands can be counted on for quality in lights and manufacturing techniques. And just because we are talking big brand names does not mean big dollars. When it comes to light kits, we think you will be pleased with the price points you find.

KC HiLiTES Cyclone LED Rock Lights Kit. KC HiLiTES, the granddaddy of auxiliary lighting, has a must-have kit if you plan to crawl rocks in the dark. The Rock Light kit consists of 4 Cyclone LED floods that are designed to mount on OEM locations on the undercarriage with no drilling required. These floods provide an enormous amount of diffused light under and around your ride, providing the illumination needed to take on boulders in the dark. Durable with an IP rating of IP68, the Cyclone LED floods can open up a whole new experience in rock crawling.

RIGID Adapt Light Bars. A light bar for all needs and speeds. The Adapt light bar has eight lights with beam patterns ranging from a 90-degree short-distance flood beam to a highly focused long-distance 15-degree spot. It automatically adjusts the mix of beams to meet illumination needs based on vehicle speed. How? A Dash Controller and under dash module contain a sophisticated program that automatically makes the adjustments. There’s even more to this bar than mentioned here. Call us and learn how this unit can make you own the night.

Rough Country CREE LED Utility Floods. These 2-inch square CREE LED floods are mountable almost anywhere on your ride. Rugged IP68 units that can be used to augment a lightbar mounted on fenders to flood rocks or mounted flush in grilles, these units come with a 3-year warranty.

These are just three examples of quality off-road light kits. To check out our entire inventory go to our off-road lighting tab under the general tab for lighting.

American pickups are getting bigger and taller with every new model year. For most enthusiasts, bigger and taller are good, but that “taller” bit means the doors are further and further from the ground. Getting into your ride should not be a challenge, but when you give it a 3 to 6-inch lift, you suddenly need a grab handle, and getting in is like climbing into an F16 fighter. And if it’s a hassle for you, think about your 9-year-old kid or anyone wearing a skirt. You want a tall ride. It gives you the clearance you need for off-road adventures, makes room for oversized tires, and generally is cool looking but makes getting in and out a challenge.

AMP Research has developed a simple, functional solution that can make every owner of a Jeep, pickup or SUV with a tall ride profile happy. The simple solution to the door height problem is to install a step or nerf bar. But installing a permanent step detracts from the clearance you want and clutters up the profile design. Unless of course, the step only appears when you are getting in or out and then disappears when the doors are closed. And that is what AMP Research came up with

AMP Research PowerStep™ Solutions

Just a quick word about AMP Research. This Tustin, CA-based company operates a 55,000 square-foot design, engineering, and manufacturing facility that has received the international standard for automotive excellence, IATF 16949:2016 certification. They focus on simple, functional solutions to automotive challenges. And while the end product appears to be simple, behind the design and manufacturing process, there is an unabating commitment to quality. They understand that buying something new is a great feeling, but never having to buy it again is incomparable.

So, when they solved the problem of accessing and egressing tall rides, they created a step that was there when you needed it and disappeared when you didn’t. They called it the PowerStep™, and they made three versions to fit the needs of trucks, Jeeps, and SUVs the AMP PowerStep™, PowerStepXtreme™, and PowerStep Smart Series™.

AMP PowerStep™

For vehicles that are not lifted but still present a challenge to family members or friends getting in and out. The original PowerStep™ is installed under the rocker panel and automatically extends outward and downward every time the door is opened. When the door closes, the running board retracts out of sight. Constructed of die-cast aluminum components, powered by a whisper-quiet AMP electric motor, and equipped with a textured, corrosion and rust-resistant step that lights up at night, the PowerStep™ rapidly became the standard for American automatic steps.

AMP PowerStepXTreme™

Designed for vehicles that have been lifted and routinely operate in rough climates and terrain conditions (think off-road), The PowerStepXTreme™ drops the running board 3 inches lower than the original PowerStep™. Running boards can support up to 600 lbs. each, are coated with a black textured finish for a sure grip, and are powered by two AMP electric motors. Mud-caked rocker panels, ice, and debris are no problem for PowerStepXTreme™’s two powerful motors. In addition, running boards are equipped with a low-profile integrated LED system

AMP PowerStep Smart Series™

You will sometimes want the steps to be deployed even though the doors are closed. Washing the vehicle and the steps come to mind. You can install a manual override on the dash or get the PowerStep Smart Series™ coupled with the PowerStep™ app and have control in the palm of your hand. This model also comes with a new chiseled step design to better compliment the looks of newer trucks, and the integrated LED lights come with a connection for auxiliary LED lighting (also controlled by the app).

Installation

Installation of the PowerStep™ is comparatively simple. However, if you are new to this you can plan on it taking several hours. The alternative is to take it to a professional service shop like American Wheel and Tire for a perfect fitment and wiring job. Lastly, as a believer in backing up their claim for quality, AMP Research provides a five-year 50,000-mile warranty on all of their PowerStep™ models.

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