Date:         Mon, 24 Jan 2005 09:19:16 -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:      Re: a few more cents on tires
In-Reply-To:  <11153412.1106547174432.JavaMail.jrunberg@mac.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

> Don't have the Hancook tires, but do have Agilis
> on one vanand LTX on the other (both Micheline).
> IMHO, both tires are bad on ice/snow


The truth is that most "all season" tires are generally not very good
ice/snow tires. I have spoken at length about this to Vredestein. According
to Vredestein, the U.S. standards for rating a tire as M&S ("mud and snow",
or all season) are so lax that almost anything could qualify. Many of the
major tire manufacturers take full advantage of this, selling the identical
tire as a summer tire in Europe and as an "all season" tire in the U.S.
They simply add "M&S" to the sidewall without changing anything about the
tire at all!  Vredestein is a big proponent of using summer tires in the
summer and snows in the winter. Having put Vredestein snows (which I also
sell) on my Vanagon this season, I can attest that there is a dramatic
improvement when you use real snows.

As for the Hankooks (which are rated as all season), I can say that they do
not compare to Vredestein snows on snow or ice (no surprise there), but are
noticably superior to the Bridgestones I last used. I haven't used the
Michelins recently enough on snow/ice to be able to make a fair comparison.
However, the German magazine ProMobil-Extra did compare the Hankooks to the
Agilis on wet roads, and the Hankooks beat the Michelins in every test. The
rating levels were excellent, good, average, poor, and very poor. The
Hankooks were rated excellent for for aquaplaning and wet breakaway, and
very good for wet braking and wet handling. By comparison, the Michelins
received a very good rating for aquaplaning and fair for everything else.

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

_____________________________________________
Toll-Free for Orders by PART # :  1-866-BUS-DEPOT