Gen I tire update

I put new tires on the 2002 that is going to my niece. I have used Nokians for years on the Gen 1 but decided to look around for other LRR tires. I have moved up to 185/75 r14s to get more options. Put together a little spread sheet using Bob Wilson's data. I opted for the Cooper GFEs as so far as I can tell, I 'think'' these are made in America. I discover that four of the top choices are out of production: Bridgestone Ecopia 100s, Sumitomo LR4, Kumho eco solus and the Cooper GFEs. Online I did locate a set of GFE through the Tires-easy.com site. Luckily for me, one of the guys at Albuquerque Hybrids reminded me to check the dates on the tires as they only have an official life of 7 years. When the tires arrived, checking the dates we found that two we 4809 - end of November 2009 and others where 2811. I decided to return the tires and went instead to Michelin Defender XT from costco that were $70 off a set of 4. i'll be interested to see how these do mileage wise once they get broken in.

It seems now that the only LRR tires still available in the 185/75 R14 size besides the Defenders is the Goodyear Gas Savers. Hopefully, a new generation of LRR tires will come on the market.

Ed