Follow-Up:
Of the five tires that have failed by tread separation the last two, maybe the last four? were the new version. We haven't had any blow outs but the tires get bulges and go out-of-round. In each case tire men would spot the probem as they walked up to the vehicle. When I said there have been about a hundred phone calls during the three times stranded far from home I am not exaggerating. One afternoon alone a Continental expeditor in Albuquerque made about 30 fruitless calls (including VW and Winnebago) while I sat with him. This was our first tire failure(1998)and he eventually got a tire shipped from California to a rendezvous point at a Continental truck tire place in Phoenix! (I never would have gone on to the Grand Canyon without a spare if I had any idea that I was in for four more tires failures.) It hasn't gotten any easier. In our latest fiasco we got tires shipped by air from Chicago to a Sears store in Raleigh NC.- only to have Sears tell us they couldn't mount truck tires. Paradoxically every Continental dealer has initially told us to go away,"We don't deal with tires like that, we only sell large truck tires."