Tyre / Tire life on KZH106 AWD 4WD

Hi all,

This is my first post and I wish to start by thanking all those who take the time to contribute to this forum. I have already gained some useful tips here.

I have a KZH106 fitted with the standard 215/70/15's. They are Yokohama Geolander HT's and have great grip and hold pressure perfectly. When first fitted I sent the van back 3 times to get a decent wheel alignment but after this was sorted found out that 35psi (as started on the placard) wasn't nearly enough. At 51psi (max for these) the centre of the tread is still wearing a bit less than the outer edges. This happens on all the tyres and they are rotated regularly. They have a load rating of 98 as required but they don't seem quite up to the job. They have done 36000km now and have maybe 5000km left. In cornering I really baby these to make them last. Even on the rear I can't get them to wear as much in the centre as the outer/inner edges. My van is about 2100kg (without me in it). I do tow a caravan with it for only a few thousand km per year.

My question is - Am I expecting too much?

What sort of tire life are people getting on their 4WD/AWD super custom's?

Is anyone using commercial van tyres? The 215/70/15 in passenger vehicle tread patterns in Oz is fairly rare. The early model Nissan X-trail was the only recent SUV vehicle to share the same tyre. Most vehicles with this size are delivery vans.

Cheers,

Dave from Downunder

My LH119 came equipped with commercial van tyres - Federal Ecovan 215/70R15. I can't comment on the life as I've only done a few thousand km on them so far. However the Japanese placard has recommended pressures at 50psi front and 65psi rear. That seems a big difference to your placarded pressure. I did wonder if the rear was too high for a lightly loaded van but at 50psi there was an obvious bulge in the sidewalls.

The steering is somewhat prone to wandering so I'll get the alignment checked at the next service and see what they say about the pressures.

Hi MalL

The commercial tyres are normally run at those pressures. The tyres are different in terms of load rating and for that vehicle your placard is correct with the pressures. In original form the KZH106 is fitted with passenger type tyres (and required to be when imported under raws). I'm only avoiding van tyres with higher load rating as they will have a higher rolling resistance and possibly not as much grip. The Yokohamas are already $200 each though. Look at the same tyre in the states and they're $80US.

OK, that makes sense. You have to wonder at the prices we pay for many things. Our dollar has been close to parity with the US$ for quite a while now but we still get charged huge differences.

Mine was imported with Bridgestone 225/70/15 light truck tyres and they were fairly good on road but rubbish off road so i changed to a passenger AT tyre and they were much better, but i did notice i had to put more air pressure in for on road, 45psi because anything less and you can feel the thing squirm around. I got about 50,000km out of the AT's which i think is ok. It's normal to find the front tyre's scrubbing the outer edges though, my old commercial Hiace did this a lot worse than the SC.

Welcome Dave, where about's you from?

Hi Srburnsy, I can probablyput 225's on as they are only 14mm greater rolling diameter than the placard size diameter (15mm is the max increase allowable over the max recommended size on the placard). They would have a higher load rating of 100 or more too. The only reservation I have about fitting slightly larger tyres is that I can currently get the overdrive to lock in at just over 80kph and then I can settle back to 80 (still locked in) under 2000 rpm. If I put larger tyres on I will have to go just that little bit faster (think Victorian Police State here) to get this to happen. I wish I could easily reprogram the computer to do this at a lower speed as it saves heaps on fuel too but I guess it is for Japanese highway speeds that it hass been set.

I'm from sunny Melbourne - where only recently has near 100% humidity has been common instead of a summer average of around 30%. Then again a small volcanic ash cloud covered most of Europe for a quarter of a year so the colder wetter year isn't surprising. That is if you don't subscribe to the theory that it is all caused by people (like me) driving 2 + tonne super customs around :-)

Haha you would be CustardCrazy to think that!

Well mine locks up at 85 and then i can settle back to 83... so not too bad, my speedo is only 1kph out according to my GPS.
Good to have you aboard mate!

I just put a set of 225/70/15 cooper discoverer tyres on mine and done about 1500 k's.
Outer edge on passenger side is scrubbing out bad, took it back to check wheel alignment and it was ok.
Tyre man said I must be doing alot of U turns.
When you think about it he is probably right because where I lve involves alot of U turns and i did tend to go a bit hard at it.
I think vans do tend to chew out tyres more quiclly than normal cars.
Mine locks up a bit over 80 and sits on 80 ok

I had bad feathering until the wheel alignment was put right but after that I still scrub out the passenger side left the most. As I said I do baby it on turns but still it chews out prematurely. Frequent rotation and the occasional reversal on the rim is the only cure. I used to joke on holidays that every U turn someone made me do cost a dollar. I think I may have undervalued the old U turn there, more like a dollar fifty a pop. My speedo is about 2kph out at 80 according to the GPS. The speedo actually indicates 85 when I get it to lock up and it will stay there until it indicates 82.

As far as fuel consumption goes I only get about 7km/litre (15l/100km) out of it normally, 8 on the highway and 6 in everyday traffic jams. Does anyone with a 4wd get much better than this?

Yep, that's the hush reality of it all... I get the same sort of tyre wear and fuel consumption.

But we still love em anyway.

We have had a few Aces over the years as delivery vans and lived on a hill with twisty roads and if we got over 20 k out of the front and not much more out of back so with this SC we are traveling well with 20k done and wearing well. Hoping to get 40k..
Burnsy is right tho, who cares they are great to drive

It's good to know mine's normal then. A 2 tonne windsock with AWD was never going to get great fuel consumption or tyre life. They are great to drive though. Against my better judgement I once test drove a Delica. Part way through the first corner I knew it wasn't for me. Luckily I got it to turn in eventually and lived to strike it off the list. Shortest test drive ever. As you can see I went on to buy the SC. I had already identified it as having better reliability, better seats & more charisma, just harder to find the one I wanted. It took 18 months till I found one but that was over 2 years ago and I haven't looked back.