I, too, liked my Kumhos, but for the money they did not last very long as
you say. The main reason I went to Hankooks, though, was that I was told my
my local Pep Boys that the Hankooks were NLA in this country. This was in
2012, I think.

Obviously that is not true from reading your post.

Jim

On Thu, Jun 12, 2014 at 10:57 AM, Dave Mcneely <mcneely4@cox.net> wrote:

> Dennis, your reply confuses me.  The 205/70-14XL that came on the vans was
> the
> General Alti-Max, iirc.  That tire was barely within spec, and lots of
> people
> reported problems with it deforming and not having good handling
> characteristics, at least according to threads on the Samba and the Vanagon
> mailing list.
>
> Do you have any  specific recommendation of 205/70-XL tires?
>
> The Kumho 857 tires that I have now have shown excellent handling
> characteristics, and are well within spec.  Like the Hankook RA08, they are
> listed on web sites in other countries as being for vans and transporters
> but in
> this country they are marketed for trailers (same as the Hankook), probably
> because the size has such limited application otherwise.  I would buy
> another
> set of Kumhos, except they are quite pricey, and only ran for about 35k
> miles.
> I have run them on back country roads, very rocky, muddy, sandy, steep.  No
> traction problems.  Though I would not consider them suitable for snow or
> ice
> conditions, I did drive from Dallas to Edmond, OK (OKC area) via a
> roundabout
> route following the Christmas blizzard of 2009 with no problems.
> ---- Dennis Haynes <d23haynes57@HOTMAIL.COM> wrote:
> > That Nexen is a horrible tire, probably best suited to trailer use.
> Either
> choice is still a low performance tire. I would still go with one of the
> 205/70-14XL alternatives just as the factory did 87 and later.
> >
> ---- Dennis Haynes <d23haynes57@HOTMAIL.COM> wrote:
> > That Nexen is a horrible tire, probably best suited to trailer use.
> Either choice is still a low performance tire. I would still go with one of
> the 205/70-14XL alternatives just as the factory did 87 and later.
> >
> > Dennis
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Vanagon Mailing List [mailto:vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com] On Behalf
> Of Dave Mcneely
> > Sent: Wednesday, June 11, 2014 9:49 PM
> > To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
> > Subject: ok, now a tire question
> >
> > Any reasons to choose one over the other:  Nexen SV820 or Hankook RA08?
> Nexen is a little less expensive, but not dramatically so.   BTW, both are
> available at WalMart, if ordered online.  Only Nexen if you go to the
> store.  Hankook but not Nexen is available at Discount Tire.  I do prefer
> to do business with Discount over WalMart.   Thanks, mcneely
>
> --
> David McNeely
>