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
