Date:         Tue, 14 Dec 2004 21:14:16 -0500
Reply-To:     The Bus Depot <vanagon@BUSDEPOT.COM>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         The Bus Depot <vanagon@BUSDEPOT.COM>
Subject:      Discount Tires (and Snows!) for Vanagons
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"

As some of you know, it's not always easy to find tires that are safe for
use on Busses at an affordable price. Without rehashing too much of what's
already in the archives, most standard passenger car tires are unsuitable
and perhaps even dangerous for use on Vanagons due to their inability to
handle the vehicle's weight. Those that are suitable often suffer from one
of several drawbacks:  High price, harsh ride (many were originally designed
as truck tires), lack of all-season capability, or limited availability. 


To this end I am now offering two different lines of radial tires, both from
OEM suppliers to Volkswagen, that are well suited to the Vanagon and
reasonably priced. These are available both as all-season tires and as snow
tires. The tires are manufactured by two companies that are OEM tire
suppliers to Volkswagen - Vredestein and Hankook. I chose these tires with
great care and based on a lot of personal experience. There was no point in
simply duplicating what you can buy at Tire Rack or your local discount
store. These are better tires for less money than generally available
elsewhere.

The Hankooks are all-season tires that I've been recommending on this list
for nearly a decade now from personal experience (although I've never sold
them).  I've used these tires on three different Vanagons, putting tens of
thousands of miles on them (including one month-long cross-country trip). I
really like them. They a great tire for the price. They basically have the
same specs as the Michelin Agilis but are almost 40% cheaper. (Incidentally,
Michelin recently purchased a minority stake in Hankook.)  Thy are
all-season (unlike the Yokohama Y356, for example, which is an excellent
dry-road tire but not suited for climates where temperatures dip below
freezing), and have a less 'truck-like' ride, and better tread wear and
wet-road handling, than the Continental Vanco8.  I've tried others, but have
always ended up going back to the Hankooks on my own Vanagons.
Unfortunately, they are not easy to find in the U.S.  So last month at the
big SEMA automotive trade show, I finally got around to stopping by
Hankook's booth, and we worked out a deal.  I expect to have them in about 2
weeks. The 185R14 version is just $66.95.

The Vredesteins tires, from Holland, are available in several versions. I
have two different snow tires available in a 185R14 size, and also an
all-season tire in 205R70. Like Hankook, Vredestein is an OEM supplier to
VW, supplying them with tires for German market Passats and Golfs. Their
all-season tire is mentioned on vanagon.com as a recommended tire. And their
snow tire was just rated number one in a head-to-head comprehensive test in
the German magazine ProMobil-Extra, where it trounced every other competitor
including the much more expensive Michelin Agilis.  Note: If you want a set
of Vredestein snows, you should order quickly. I could only get a few sets,
and am keeping one set for myself!  They start at $84.95.

You can find more details on all of these tires (as well as general info on
Vanagon tire requirements) at
<http://www.busdepot.com/busdepot/details/tires.jsp> . 

On a related issue, I looked into the Woosung tires as well (which were
recently mentioned on this list). California Import Parts sells them, which
made me curious. Were they just a cheap tire, or was there something to
them?  Woo-Sung primarily sell tires on a private label basis, under various
names including Hercules, Merit, Signet, and Jupiter. Unlike Vredestein and
Hankook, they are not an OEM supplier to VW, or to any other car
manufacturer that I can determine. This much I knew. And after digging
around a bit, it's still about all I know. A web search turned up virtually
nothing about the company besides data on their bankruptcy filing a few
years ago. I couldn't even find a company website!  Nor was I able to find
any relevant test reports or commercial reviews of their tires, except for
the following report from the Type2 list: "I bought a 79 Westy that had
Woo-Sung reinforced tires Load Range C on them, and couldn't figure out why
my Westy behaved so badly. Took it to my local tire store, and they showed
me 3 of the 4 tires had started to seperate, and you could feel the bumps in
the tread where the inner belts were coming apart. These tires looked like
they had at least 1/2 their tread left."  To be fair this is only one
person, so it's too small a sample to draw firm conclusions from. For all I
know they might be great. But without being able to find anything whatsoever
to indicate that they are, I was left feeling uneasy about attaching my name
to them. Now you know as much about them as I do.

One final note: Tires do not qualify for further listmember discounts. This
is because my website undercalculates the shipping cost on them, so I lose a
few bucks in shipping on each tire I sell to begin with. So essentially the
discount is already built-in.

- Ron Salmon
  The Bus Depot, Inc.
  www.busdepot.com
  (215)  234-VWVW

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