Interesting. Now if I am reading the Samba thread correctly, these General tires that failed were on a passenger van, not a Westy. It seems to me these should have been OK for a passenger van-defective tires rather than underrated? FWIW, my favorite tire of all time for my Westy, the Continental Vanco 8, is no longer available in our stock size for Vanagons. I know from taking my '85 Westy ( a Weekender, BTW, so lighter than a full Westy) to the dump, where it gets weighed coming in and going out, that with 3 people aboard it weighs around 4,100 lbs. The tires I have on it now are 15" Kumho Solus KR21 in a 205/75, rated at 1598 lbs. Unless I'm way off in my math, it seems these should be adequate for my van. I've really got no complaints with them, other than they are not as good as the Vanco 8's I once had (but also cost half as much) The other reason I'm curious about all this is that I have also owned several full sized Chevy conversion vans that (and I am guessing here) have to be around the same weight load as a Vanagon Westy, and I never used reinforced sidewall tires on any of those. Jeff 

Jeff Stewart 

----- Original Message -----

At 09:45 PM 7/16/2011, J Stewart wrote: 
>really know of a case? Not your father-in-laws next door neighbors 
>cousins best friend, but actual knowledge. And if a tire is rated to 
>carry, say 1700 lbs., at what point will it fail? 1750? 1800? 2000? 
>There has to be a fudge factor designed in here, what is it? Just 
>curious.... Jeff 

I experienced two successive rear-tire blowouts a few months apart on 
my '84 Westy using 205-70x14 tires from General. Both failures 
involved a four-inch rip along the radius of the sidewall and exactly 
resembled the after-blowout photos in 
http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?p=4855739 . Tires 
were under a year old and were inflated to spec. Tires were 
recommended for the application by local Firestone dealer. Both 
failures occurred on a smooth road at highway speeds in hot weather. 

Shifted to reinforced Michelins and much better handling with no 
further problems. 

Yours, 
David