How are your hankook h727 tires holding up?

I stand by my opinion. In your previous posting, you stated: "With the Integerities my right front tire was really, really worn out when I got them replaced. But the left front and two rear tires were worn out but not nearly as bad." This indicates you have a serious alignment problem, which I believe you have not fixed (posted in another thread) Do you ever even rotate your tires?. Bad alignment can cause instabiltiy at high speeds. Perhaps the H727s were an improvement over your unevenly worn GY Integrities in terms of stability with a poorly aligned vehicle?

I had a close call the other day where I had to brake hard and steer left to avoid another car (they steered into me from the right lane). My speed was about 60 mph. My car was initially unresponsive and wiggled back and forth like a bowl of jello when it finally responded. Never experienced that kind of response with the OEM tires. In my opinion, that is a safety issue, hence "dangerous", even at the not-so-high speed of 60 mph.

 

I had the alignment done immediately after purchasing my car with stock Integrities on them, actually. I think the previous owner may have hit a curb or something.

I actually also had a panic stop situation earlier this week where a racoon ran out onto the highway right in front of me. I did not experience any of this "wiggles back and forth like a bowl of jello" stuff, I hit the brakes and steered slightly to the right and the car tracked safely forward without any unexpected movement as one would expect. If you are experiencing that perhaps your tires needs to be rebalanced or the alignment done, or perhaps you have a bad pair - that is the kind of thing that would happen more with my Integrities. To be fair it is possible that some of my issues with the Integrities were actually caused by a bad tire, bad balancing, etc. I mean that's totally possible. But I have none of these problem with the h727's. I cannot speak for your car, or your pair, but mine do not so I do not believe that is a characteristic of the tire.

While I find the h727's less responsive handling-wise than the previous tires, I also do not believe they are any worse than other cars I've driven - a Dodge Durango, Dodge Caravan, Rav 4, etc etc so in no way do I personally think that the tires could be called "dangerous".

 

PaulRivers, just out of curiosity, is your Prius a touring edition or a standard edition? I have heard that the touring has a stiffer suspension. Mine is a standard edition, but I do have the tunnel and tower braces installed, which did improve my handling until I put the H727s on.

My tires are well balanced and my alignment is within the recommended tolerances. I can take my hands of the wheel and the car drives straight on a flat road.

What tire pressure are you running presently? I'm running 43 lbs on all four. F8L suggested I increase my tire pressure, which I did. That improved things somewhat. The close call I had was with the tires at this pressure.

I discussed the situation with a co-worker. He suggested that maybe Hankook has a quality issue where some tire lots are better than others. Since I special ordered them, I'm stuck with them. As I said in one of my previous postings, they are Ok in every aspect except for this jello-like, poor response that they have. You yourself have indicated experiencing some degree of unresponsiveness to these tires, as have others.

I'm not sure why you feel compelled to defend these tires. They are just tires. I put in my two-bits for people who might be considering buying them. They are not satisfactory in all respects, I myself would not buy them again. As to whether others would or would not, its up to them to do their homework and decide for themselves.

 

I got a 2005 Prius used with 165,000 miles on it and the Goodyear Integrity tires were just about bald. Put on some new Hankook Optimo H727 with P195/65R15 size and my fuel economy is about 48mpg. The ride is considerably quieter and the bumps less noisy.

Handling is much improved too. The car wanders less and does not get pushed around as much in the cross winds.

The H727's are inflated to 40/38... I am considering increasing them to 42/40 on my next rotation.

So far so good.

 

It's a standard edition, not only was the "touring" edition harder to find but I liked the ride less and I could tell the difference within a few minutes of riding in it...I get a little motion sick in stiff suspension cars.

It's always possible that for some reason those improvements don't work well with the Hankooks...

Yeah, and maybe my response was a little aggressive, I can only say with 100% certainty that *mine* are definitely not "dangerous". Like I said I agree the handling isn't as sharp.

It's just annoying that whenever something new comes out there's always someone being a drama queen and calling some drawback a "life and death situation".

On the other hand I should probably be a little less aggressive - it is truly always possible that it's not just a matter of opinion, that your tires are genuinely different than mine - mounted different, or just somehow a bad batch like you said.

I can only say with 100% certainty that mine are by *no means* anything resembling "dangerous". Obviously from my previous posts I agree that the handling isn't as sharp (though in my opinion the car wanders less so that's an improvment), and I feel like the stopping distance isn't quite as good. But I personally, based on my tires and my experience, disagree entirely that there's anything "dangerous" about the h727's in general.

P.S. Though there are also many other tires out there that they don't test, and other opinions, fyi in their top 10 or so tires, Consumer Reports only gave the Michelin HydroEdge tires a 4/5 for handling, everything else (including the h727's) got a 3/5, so if you prefer to get other tires that might be a direction to look. Or if you got them relatively recently a lot of tire shops will exchange them for a new and different brand/set of tires for little or no cost.

 

That's your opinion. I am interested in your technical details since I am a technical person and a person who loves to solve technical problems. People who resort to personal attacks, and who don't maintain their cars properly tend to discredit themselves.

The H727s are, in my opinion dangerous at highway speeds, at least on my car. Both driving on the highway and in the one emergency situation I had since I bought them, they have been scary. This may be partially due to the suspension of the Prius in combination with the H727s, but that is the car we are all driving.

 

I hadn't attacked you personally, I said (which is true) that there's always someone with any popular product who comes back and says that it's bad, dangerous, doesn't work right, etc. There's several normal reasons why this would happen -
1. Any popular product gets used by a lot of people, the more people that will use it the more likely something will go wrong
2. So someone can get a defective tire
3. Or it's mounted wrong somehow
4. Or the car develops a problem at the same time the tire is put on that isn't the tire's fault but is associated with the time the tire was put on

In retrospect, #3 might be the cause of my own low opinion of the original integrity tires.

And then there are several other less valid reasons as well -
1. Sometimes you get an elitist (how many times have we heard how "terrible" the prius's handling is and they could never drive the car when it's not great and not precise but it's hardly the end of the world either).
2. Sometimes you get people who like being dramatic - "if I can't navigate through cones spaced 10 feet apart at 50mph at the track the car is horribly dangerous!"
3. When a product is really popular, often competing companies will hire PR people to try to convince people there's some sort of fatal flaw in the product so people shouldn't buy it. They write bad reviews on amazon, make up plausible sounding stories about they really liked the product at first but it blew up and caught there house on fire (who wants to take that risk??), etc etc. Consumer reports tests claimed that the h727's are an all weather tire that is better than many winter tires in winter - a claim that the top tires from many of the other manufacturers didn't get.

And...I can definitely not say if the tires on your car are dangerous or not. The facts are -
1. I would in no way call mine "dangerous".
2. You would say yours are dangerous.
3. I have not heard else saying that the the tires "dangerous", even though they're much talked about tires on prius chat

Thus the most reasonable conclusion to me is that there may be something wrong with your tires or the car somehow. As you said perhaps you somehow got a defective tire or a bad batch or something. I would normally say another alternative is that your threshold for "dangerous" is way different than other people's, except that from your description of the tires wandering around when braking that mine simply do not do that - I think I mentioned it earlier but I hit the brakes in an emergency stop the other week on the highway when an animal ran onto the highway and my car did not wander or move around, it just continued straight like it should.

 

I purchased my Hankook H27 Optimo tires for my 2004 Prius and so far (after 6,000 miles) I am very satisfied. Some of the tires I've had on the car before were GoodYear Tripletred, Nokian WR2, Fuzion HRi to name a few (I have over 156k miles). I'd have to say that the Hankooks are my favorites so far. They are the quietest tires I've ever put on this vehicle. They definitely augment the suspension in that the tires provide a more cushy ride. I've driven in heavy rain storms and the tires resist hydroplaning and feel well planted when driving on various highway road surfaces. Since the traction control system on the 04 is very sensitive it is hard to gauge how well wet acceleration is, but based on a few quick getaways from stop lights and toll plazas, I'd say wet traction is definitely better than most of the other tires I've had on the car. Where this tire really shines is in snow and I was fortunate to be able to test the tires in snow this past Saturday (October 29th) We had a freak snowstorm in the NE and I was up in northern NJ with six inches of snow on the ground. I was amazed at how well the Prius accelerated and handled in the snow. I'd say with confidence that these tires were better than the Nokian WR tires I once had on the car. I'll report back when I have 10k more miles on these tires.

 

I'm glad i'm not the only one getting a hit on the MPG. Almost 1000 miles on these new tires, and i've taken a 6-8+ mpg hit. Though I can't tell how much the cold weather is contributing to the drop.

 

I think they're really incredible tires. They're quiet, long-wearing, handle very nicely and have amazing winter traction. I haven't noticed any hit in MPG--they seem to roll very nicely. Still getting mid-50's in the winter and high-50's to low-60's in the summer.

 

Fantastic thread everyone, seeing as the last post was in January, any updates from anyone??

Also, deciding between the Hankook H727's and the Goodyear Assurance Fuel Max, anyone have an opinion on these?

I'm in Nebraska, so I prefer good winter handling on a tire....

 

The Ecopia EP422 recently rated very high in snow traction. In ice traction it did well but the Fuel Max did better. The Fuel Max did worse in snow. Neither tire is great for wet traction but passable if driven smartly. The H727 does well in snow traction but it is not good for mpg or handling. Decisions decisions.... lol

I'd go with the EP422 or the H727.

Tire Test Results : Eco-Focused All-Season Tires: Do They Deliver on the Promise?

Tire Test Results : Testing the Goodyear Assurance TripleTred All-Season