At 07:54 4/21/99 -0700, Karl Wolz wrote:
>My suspicion would be that it's liability.  The US is such a litigious?
>society that anything manufactured for us is labeled well under its true
>ability.  If a tire is capable of holding 1500 lbs, some idiot will push it
>to 1600 and sue when it blows.

There is probably some history here...I know that one of Nader's pet peeves
back in the Corvair days was overloaded *factory* tires -- he made quite a
stink that led to the current rating system, and to decent tires being put
on from the factory.

>
>BTW, I think most of the posts on the tire issue are missing the boat. My
>concern on the LT, C, and D rated tires vs. passenger rated tires is not
>that they catastrophically lose a sidewall and kill us all (it could happen,
>but probably won't).  We have a ton of anecdotal evidence that folks use
>passenger tires on their Vanagons (even Westy's) and have survived.
>

I have personally had two (2) Goodyear Wrangler Radial P205/75R14 tires
(load rated 1532# @35psi) fail on my '84 Westy, both with radial sidewall
rips about 3 inches long, both on the rear.  Both happened during
straight-ahead highway driving at  70-75 mph.  Tires had about 30k and 45k
miles on them.

david

David Beierl - dbeierl@ibm.net