Date:         Mon, 19 Apr 1999 07:08:28 -0700
Reply-To:     Stuart Redford <scr@MAIL.PACIFIER.COM>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Stuart Redford <scr@MAIL.PACIFIER.COM>
Subject:      The never-ending tire thread
In-Reply-To:  <3.0.32.19990418235401.006e5270@mail.ipns.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

At 11:57 PM 4/18/99 -0700, you wrote:

>It would be nice if it was that simple.  The list members who have been
>sold the wrong (and unsafe) tires by "professionals who do nothing but sell
>and install tires all day" are legion.

Yup

>
>Vanagons require either Reinforced Sidewall or Load Range C or better (like
>D) tires.  If the tires don't say that right on them, they are unsafe no
>matter what a misinformed or morally flexible tire salesman tells you.

Yup

The Vanagon is not a minivan. It's a truck. It's heavy (I don't know what
the curb weight is, but my '91 Camper Van weighed 5250 lbs. loaded with one
human and a mean stereo on an Idaho State scale) with weight tilted towards
the rear. It's top heavy especially with that Yakima rack and stuff on top
of that poptop. Figure 1500 lbs. per wheel, minimum. If you go to
Michelin's tire load chart at
http://www.michelin.com/us/eng/tire/guide/load.html you will see that's a
load rating of  95. Go out to your wagen and read the load rating on your
rubber. If you don't have sneakers on your wagen that can handle the load,
you're requesting a sidewall blowout on a sharp curve when the box has to
lean over to make that curve. It's your munchkins I worry about.

In 1996 I bought an '85 Weekender from the original owner. The day I went
to pickup the wagen, he told me he had had a blowout on the way from work
the previous night. Sure enough, the sidewall was blasted out with a hole I
could put my fist through. They were some Goodyear passenger tires. This
from an owner that gave me many receipts in which an old one had a large
scribbling from a mechanic stating the wrong tires were on the car.

Michelin makes a tire specifically for the Vanagon, the MXT Reinforced. It
has a load rating of 99. I bought a set in January from the Tirerack (web)
$91 per (presently backordered). Yeah, they're expensive, but the $65 load
C tires at Costco that I read about so often on the web aren't rated high
enough.

Stuart