My Kumho Tire Saga

[LarryJM]

When I decided I wanted to upgrade my boring factory wh steel spoked rims to aluminum I decided to go with the higher LRD and non 65mph limited Kumho 857 tires. So back in April of 2013 I bought 4 of the 195R14 Kumho 857 tires from tire rack. When they came in they were older than I anticipated, but still decided to give them a go. The tires received had date codes of 3611 to 2112. In Jan of this year I had one tire loose it's tread afer only 6,400 miles use. At that time I bought two GY Marathons and one more aluminum rim and put two of the remaining Kumhos on the front axle and the two new Marathons on the rear axle. That gave me two spares, one Kumho and my original spare (GY Marathon) that came with the trailer. Last month I lost another Kumho by tread separation which had 10,100 miles on it and was 49mo old. That tire was replaced with the Kumho spare I had. 100 miles further down the road ... you guessed it the Kumho on the other side sustained tread separation with 10,200 total miles and was 41 mo old. Needless to say at the next large town I went directly to the nearest WM supercenter with tire service and bough 3 new GY Marathons and now have Marathons all around, with 1 new Marathon spare and within the next couple of weeks the last Kumho will be repaced with another Marathon.

Before this recent Kumho saga and debacle I had been running GY Marathons since 1995 and put close to 50K to 60K on them and never had a tread separate and only one flat. I do watch my tire pressures like a Hawk and have a tire monitoring system and except for the short time I had the 4 Kumhos on both axles and did travel at a max of 65mph I never exceeded 60mph for any length of time when I had a Marathon on the ground. I also, ran all my Marathons at close to their MAX LOAD (within 100lbs of each tire) and even this last trip was slightly over by almost 100lbs per tire.
Not sure what to say about these Kumhos and I'm not one to bash a tire with limited data, but something tells me with these three failures all basically the same within such a sort time frame there might well have been more than just pure luck going on ...

I had toyed with even giving the Kumho's another shot and going up one size to the 205R14, but after these last two Kumho failures so close apart and so similar, I'm now back in the GY Marathon Camp and sleep better at night with those on the ground. In the end I'm now on the Marathon BW which has the HUGE advantage of being widely carried by most WMs with GY tire dealers nationwide so getting replacements mounted within a day for under $110/tire almost anywhere is a MAJOR, MAJOR factor in my decision.


Larry

[Big_Katuna]

I am very happy with my KUMHO tires.
I learned the hard way too about insisting on reading the tire date before installation.

[coolbreeze01]

I think Kumho owes you some money back since they carry a 5 or 6 year warranty, depending on the tire.

[jake2250]

Just had to cancel our trip because my less than four year old Maxxis 8008 tires are dry rotted, the worst one had a bit of tread separation, Just glad I caught it before I left and didn't cause any damage.

[rbpru]

I bought my TT used and it still had the factory tires on it, I suspect they were not used much. I have add another 15,000 miles them. I will replace them in the spring because they are six years old and I do not want to push my luck on a trip out west.

The point is, there seems to be no rhyme or reason to brand, cost, or load ratings when it comes to tire failures.

[Nunyadamn]

I had Kumhos on a Honda Civic. They were low profile. The problem I had was the stems on the new rims I had an oval opening and the valve stems base were round. They would hold until I got up to speed on a freeway then eventually bend over and leak. The tires would immediately go flat and being low profile, shredded the tire and then started to eat up the rims. This happened on 3 different tires within the first 6 months. Took discount tire a while to finally figure out the real problem. I kept blaming the tires as being defective.

[hohenwald48]

I had some Kumhos on a Mazda CX9 once upon a time and they worked great for many miles. I guess you can never tell with tires.

I've been doing a lot of reading on other forums and it seems the Marathons don't get very good reviews either.

[mikebreeze]

I had some Kumhos on an SUV that I had a few years back. They are cheaper but they got 'out of round' within 30K miles and I had to replace them. So my experience with this brand was not good. I have some Kellys on my RV right now. So far, so good.