Thoughts on Nokian Vatiiva A/T's?

[ksj]

Anyone using these on a Tacoma? I've got all the stuff to lift my '09 this weekend and wanted to go with a larger tire once the lift was done. I've read some good things about the Nokian's overall, but haven't seen much about the Vatiiva A/T's. Does anyone have experience with these? I can save about $45/tire over the Bridgestone Revo's with these.

Thanks,

Kevin

PS - I'm also thinking of getting the Vatiiva M/T's on steel wheels for the summer, so if you have experience with those I'd appreciate the input as well.

 

[VtFly]

Had the Vatiiva's for 3 snowy/icy Vermont winters. Great the first two winters, but they wear real fast, and were not impressive the third winter. soft compound. Now we're wearing General Grabber AT2s. In the first two snows one of which was pretty icy the Grabbers performed very well. Hope they last longer than the Vatiiva's.

 

[Co-opski]

That is a very popular tire up here, but I have no experiance with them to share.

 

[bigreen505]

Do a search for the Cooper ATR, my understanding is they are essentially the same tire. Same with the Vatiiva MT and Mickey Thompson MTZ. While good tires, they are not really Nokians to the best of my knowledge.

If you are trying to get snow tires, Nokian now has a full line of SUV sized snow tires. I have the studded Cooper M&S and they are adequate and IMO very quiet for a studded tire. Blizzak also makes truck size tires. Someone did a test of the Hakkapellita, Cooper and Blizzak a couple years ago. Nokian was head and shoulders ahead, Cooper and Blizzak about the same. However the way they did the test was mounting the wheels/tires on the truck and heading out. This did not give the studs time to really seat or scuff off any molding rubber that may be on the tire. My Coopers gained a lot of traction (and noise) after about 2,000 miles.

No specific experience with the tires you mention, but if you do a search for the MTZ on nearly any "truck" forum you will get a wealth of opinions. Generally people are pretty pleased with them in nearly all conditions that a MT tire would excel at. Wear is about 30,000 on set. You will pay a premium for the Nokian name on them.