Cooper Discovery AT tires any good?

Anything is likely to be an improvement over those firestones. In 10+ years of working in my family's tire shop, that was one of the worst damn pieces of crap I ever saw foisted on the public as being a supposed light truck tire. I never understood the recall where they were treating it as a manufacturing defect in some of them, depending on when produced and in what plant. They were ALL bad! The one good thing I have to say about them is they helped me to sell a lot of Goodyears. 8^)

---------------------------------------------------- Del Rawlins- del@_kills_spammers_rawlinsbrothers.org Remove _kills_spammers_ to reply via email. Unofficial Bearhawk FAQ website:

My understanding of the problem is that:

1.) Ford built the Explorer on the Ranger frame, which really wasn't designed to handle that kind of weight, thus making the Explorer more top-heavy than most SUVs.

1. Ford tried to market it as a car by A) Specifying low air pressure to try to make it ride smoother B) Promoting it to people that had no clue how to handle a truck properly in adverse situations, ie a blowout.

2. Some / Most / All of the Firestone tires had real problems.

So you have a fire and gasoline type situation. Ultimately one of the reasons I bought a Jeep Cherokee instead of an Exploder is the taint that brand now has on it. The first thing I did was check to see if there was an open recall still on the tires, but I wasn't that lucky.

Ford was simply suggesting an appropriate air-down pressure for moderate rock crawling... as Explorer drivers are prone to do.

-Brian

: > I understood that design to be a Ford problem, exacerbated by the low : > air pressure Ford specified.

I can only think of a couple times that we had defective Goodyears *that we sold* come back in the time that I was working there, one of which I suspected was run low. There were definitely problems with the tires that Goodyear sold to the OEMs, like the Wrangler RT/S and other light duty lines that were probably fine on paved roads but didn't hold up at all on the Cordova roads. Those lower quality Goodyears definitely made it harder for us to sell the good stuff to the average customer who had to be educated on the difference. We sold mostly the higher end, heavier load range light truck tires and usually whatever their middle line was for passenger cars. It was definitely more difficult to compete with the lower cost brands that way, but the people who did buy a set from us were generally satisfied. We normally didn't see them in the shop again until it was time to sell them a new set a few years later. As opposed to the more regular customers with uniroyal/firestone/ whatever who were in more frequently for yet another patch, but those guys usually figured it out eventually, too.

---------------------------------------------------- Del Rawlins- del@_kills_spammers_rawlinsbrothers.org Remove _kills_spammers_ to reply via email. Unofficial Bearhawk FAQ website:

Ford definitely proliferated the problem by using a POS tire and their air pressure spec didn't help anything, but it also doesn't change the fact that the Firestone in question is crap, no matter what vehicle it is installed on. There is no strength to them whatsoever; they puncture easily, and there is no built in margin of safety in case they are run flat/low by the average motorist, who has no clue how much pressure they are running irrespective of what the little tag in the doorjamb may say. It is my personal opinion that installing passenger car rated tires ( which the firestones are/were) on a light truck should be a criminal offense.

---------------------------------------------------- Del Rawlins- del@_kills_spammers_rawlinsbrothers.org Remove _kills_spammers_ to reply via email. Unofficial Bearhawk FAQ website:

Good tire, great value. They are long lasting and I have yet to encounter a shifted belt even after sitting flat and frozen for a few months.

-Brian

Those were a bit before my time. I've seen a few worn out ones but that's about it. We sold a lot of Wrangler AT, AT/S, and Workhorse extra grip after Goodyear started pricing the AT lines out of most peoples' budgets.

---------------------------------------------------- Del Rawlins- del@_kills_spammers_rawlinsbrothers.org Remove _kills_spammers_ to reply via email. Unofficial Bearhawk FAQ website:

I've never liked Firestone tires. I don't recall the details but back in the

70's there was the Firestone 500, a tire that was popping like water balloons. As I recall it killed a number of people as well, and was subject to a nation wide recall. So if Firestone was ever a good company its been more than 25+ years ago.

I'm surprised the Firestone 500 didn't come up in any of the lawsuits. Couldn't some lawyer use it to show a pattern of manufacturing defective, poorly designed tires?

The only experience I have with Cooper tires is a set of car tires I had that were labeled with the Big O brand. Those were an absolute hazard to my life. More flats than I can remember and a freeway blowout. I've since talked to an independent tire dealer (when he was replacing the Firestones on my Expedition at Ford's expense) about Cooper tires and he said they were a good brand. (He did not sell Cooper or Big O brands) YMMV

Dean

I got 80k to 100k miles on two rounds of the AT and Explorer=20 combo. Excellent milage, good compromise between road noise and=20 slop weather traction. Of course I kept them at 28 psi since I=20 couldn't stand the squimy handling at 26psi, run empty most of=20 the time, and those of us in the northland don't have too many=20 days of 90 degrees plus.

But I can certa> I understood that design to be a Ford problem, exacerbated by the low

I hate Goodyears! Those Wranglers that they put on the new TJ suck! I flattened 3 of them in the first year I had them from normal (nothing worse than unpaved road/highway)use-2 separated treads, one sidewall split. I replaced them with 31 x 10.50 Kellys and haven't had a problem in 3 years! I'll never buy Goodyear voluntarily.

Matt

After blowing out/destroying one of my Kelly Safari AWR tires on a chunk of limestone in the Pryor Mountains last August, I bought a set of Goodyear Wrangler MTR's for my '98 XJ. The Goodyears are far superior to the Kellys. I'm subjecting my Jeep and its tires to conditions far worse than "unpaved road/highway". So far no problems whatsoever. The Goodyear MTR's are the best tires I've ever had on the Jeep. Lots of road noise but that's easily cured by the volume knob on the stereo.

Goodyear Wrangler MTR are standard on the TJ Rubicon. Highly recommended.

Best regards, Dave Rose Cactus Cowboy Big Wonderful Wyoming '49 Willys Pickup (parts truck) '62 Willys Pickup 4WD 226 '98 XJ Sport O|||||||O

"Matt" wrote in

This illustrates one of my biggest problems when I was an independant Goodyear dealer. Goodyear has been sabotaging their own reputation for years with the crappy tires they sell to the OEMs, like the Wranger RT/S that came on my Jeep and probably yours. My opinion of that tire can be summed up by stating that the day after I got the Jeep home, I removed the RT/S tires and installed a new set of Wrangler MT/Rs, which I had ordered well in advance of taking delivery of my TJ. They are still holding up just fine at around 30K, no complaints.

Goodyear makes some damn tough tires but none of them are installed as original equipment by the automakers. The crap they make for new vehicles isn't any better than anyone else's OEM crap, with the possible exception of the firestone lines. You've had a bad experience with Goodyear and nobody can blame you for feeling the way you do, but their better tires are as good as anybody's and better than most.

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