John,

Your right on ... VW indeed used a Conti tire on the Vanagon, 

Continental     Transport RS 771        185R14 C 6PR

When I did the OE tire survey I turned up two people that were still running
around on the original 4 OE tires.

Of course total mileage on these rides was under 70k as I recall.

And something like a dozen or so folks still had the OE spare in place and
never been on the ground.

 
good road,
good adventure,
good life,
 
larry chase

www.roadhaus.com
www.roadhaus.com/shops.html
www.roadhaus.com/tires.html
www.roadhaus.com/tires/guideline.html

Date:    Mon, 14 Nov 2005 09:08:45 -0800
From:    John Bange <jbange@GMAIL.COM>
Subject: Old Spare Tire

I backed over a piece of angle iron in my mom's driveway last night and
flattened my right front tire. So I jack it up, pull the flat off and drop
the spare. It suddenly occurs to me that I ought to LOOK at the spare, see
if it's decent. In a year of ownership, even pulling that spare out a dozen
times to get at stuff underneath, I never actually checked the tire. It had
plenty of tread and held air OK-- just never occurred to me. It's a
Continental 185R14C, and from the look of the rubber, I bet it came with th=
e van when it was shipped from Graz. I drove home on surface streets,
keeping it under 40mph, at it still seems OK-- but I'm definitely replacing
it tomorrow when I get the flat replaced. Just thought I'd mention it, in
case there's some other dunderhead on the list like me, driving around with
a 15=
+
year old tire under the nose.