Funny, I just put tires on the Explorer yesterday, Replacing Michelin's that came on it (bought the truck used last October). I have been researching tires for 4-6 weeks, knowing I needed them before the snow flies. I went to tireRack and looked at what was important to me (for the SUV, good in snow - for my car it would be gas mileage and quiet ride). I thought I would get Firestone Destinations, but happened to run into a sale on Kumho A51's for very cheap and a rebate (only good until 10/31). I looked up the Kumho's onTireRack and found to my surprise that they were in the top 96% (for AT's). Bonus is the Kumo's aren't just A/T's but have the mountain/snow rating on them. Drove home yesterday (30 miles) and was pleasantly surprised that they aren't noisy and they have a better ride than the Michelin's did and the traction on wet roads is better. Just have to wait to see how they perform in snow, but they have an aggressive tread, so don't expect any issues. Of course, your needs may be different than mine and YMMV.
Oh imacman - you had some good stuff for me to look at last week - do you want to chime in with your research?
Me too. I had kumho ecstas on my mustang, and they were great tires. I had fuzions on my Audi, and they were decent. They were admittedly more summer performance based all season tires, so not as great in winter. I just put kumho ecsta 4x II ultra high performance all seasons on the Audi. These are so good in rain, ride quality, and while I've not tested them in any snow yet, the reviews on tire rack are pretty glowing. I put Falken wild peak AT's on the 4runner a good while ago, 2 yrs ago iirc. Those are by far the best all around AT tires I've ever had on ANY of my 4wd vehicles. Quiet , aggressive, great tread wear, not expensive.
I think alota people are afraid of the cheaper tires like kumho I have the ecsta as well. For the price (half of a better tire) of a "performance" tire they are pretty solid. They dont hook the best or wear the best, but they are really close to any street tire that costs double.
I put a set on my Yota Tacoma , they got good reviews and the price was right I only got a few 100 miles on them too gonna put the same thing on my Honey's Rouge .
After looking and looking and looking we decided to go with the General Altimax RT43. Set of 4 for about $490 at Sears. The price from an online vendor like tirerack would have been roughly the same after sipping and having my local mechanic install them.
That's what I've found too, many times Tire Rack is more $$, just as soon deal with the local tire place .
I was going to add earlier that I tried a set of General altimax on my Audi. They were on before my fuzions. They were ok, but what really bothered me was that they turned rock hard in less than 2 years, and would not grip to stop in cold weather. They were actually scary, and the poor cold weather traction actually had me replace the tires with the fuzions when there was still a bit more tread to use on them. The same tire hardening occurred on my pirelli Scorpion ATR tires on my 4runner. The pirellis had 80k on those tires, and that was after like 6 years. So that's acceptable. I had these altimax tires. Altimax HP Hopefully you don't have the same experience that I did. I see they don't make that model of tires any more. I would think general tire would have fixed that pretty quickly. Performance oriented tires that are too hard is an odd combination. My Audi eats tires, so to not run a set of tires to their wear marks is not a good review.
