Nokian Hakka R2 winter tires

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Luckily no vibration on mine, and the shop I got them from doesn't even use a Hunter roadforce balancer. I either got lucky or Nokian has finally figured out how to make these tires to a higher standard.
 
Originally Posted By: SubLGT
Came across this comment at another tire forum:

"...what you're probably experiencing [with your Nokian R2 tires] is excessive road force. I've mounted/balanced tons of tires and have always found Nokian tires to be bad for that………

http://forums.beyond.ca/st2/vibration-wi...mp;pagenumber=2

I can believe it.


I don't...!

I had a vibration problem with new Michelins on oem Honda wheels... balanced twice, still vibrated... tire chain KAL TIRE, sent me to a different location with a road force balancer. Tech spun two wheels, deemed one worthy of adjustment, matched the tire to the wheel as per machine instructions. 20 minutes , no vibration...

And i've had 4 sets of Nokian winters, and all have run dead smooth. A couple of tires needed "tweaking..." but never had one that couldn't be made smooth...

Most drivers have no idea how much effort oems put into getting that new car smoothness... wheels tolerances are tightly controlled, all wheels are measured and MARKED for low spot, those that don't meet spec are discarded... same with tires, which have tighter manufacturing tolerances than after market tires, and are all tested and MARKED with a red dot for the stiff spot.

Then the assembly is match mounted, and tested again on really expensive machines... and if it passes, put on the new car...

In my experience with tires, anytime the oem tire is replaced, the odds are at least one of the tires will have a road force vibration. You can balance any wheel/tire assembly, but that doesn't mean it will run smooth...

Most vibrations are not balance related... they are almost always excessive road force issues. Some shops understand this, and either road force balance the wheel, or they do old school adjusting, rotate tire 180 * , re-balance...

Other shops just don't have a clue, and blame the wheel (unless it's bent or the lug holes are drilled crooked, it's never the wheel...) , or the car, or anything but the tire... then the car owner blames the tech, or the balance machine, or the tire...

If you have a vibration with new tires, the first step is to CHECK the balance. Spin the wheel with the weights as they were... and see what the machine says. If it zeros out, or is really close, it is almost always a road force issue.

Don't let them keep re-balancing... over and over... to do the same experiment over and over, and expect a different result is insanity, as per some guy named Einstein...

Nokians seem about the same as any other tire I've run, most are just fine, some take a little adjusting, and once in a while, a tire is defective. I haven't had one yet...!
 
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Originally Posted By: Quattro Pete
Finally got them installed. They felt somewhat harsh riding on the way back home from the shop. Alas, the shop overinflated them, which I corrected when I got home.

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Wheels look sharp... Have heard good things about RIALS, made in EUROPE still...
 
Thanks. Yup, when it comes to aftermarket rims, most are now made in China. Rial is an exception. I also have a set of Rials for my BMW for winter - they are now 5 years old and still look great. So I figured I'll get Rials for the wife as well.
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Made in russia, with extra vodka and love? :p

They are definitely a class leader, depending on your priorities in the real bad winter conditions a definite winner.
some car manufacturers recommend running +4psi in winter tires.

I run my all seasons at 34/33, (30/29 oem)
so far the blizzack ws-80's started at 38(were stored warm)

I checked them next morning and it was 36.5psi

now today in 28F it was 34.5psi.. just about perfect once we hit 20F. I may let out 1psi.

They have a slight flat spotting overnight for 1-2mi if driven and warmed up fully the day before

overall I am happy

Hakka R2 and hakka 8's were tops on my choices but russian made, full msrp price, and the inability to order them mounted on wheels to save roadforce mounting and balancing (90$)
put them out of my price range.

If I could have ordered them locally and gotten a good price at one place that would fix any issues.. would have gone that route. but at 300$ more and the whole tpms hassle locally it wasnt viable.
 
I would put Hakka R2s and WS-80s as probably in the top 3 or 4 winter studless tires out there... I like my Toyo GSI-5s as well...!

I had a chance to drive WS-80s this week... -20*C (-5*F...) , 6 inches of snow, hard packed and icy... tires were excellent ... equal to my Toyos and Hakka R's... can't really say much about bare road handling, but they seemed "typical...as in a little soft and squirmy..." for a studless winter.

A friend got them at Costco for DIRT CHEAP last month... $70 off of Costco's already LOW price + 1/2 price install. Best value around here, period.

Nokian Hakka R2's were about $ 300 more a set...! The only question mark with the WS-80 is wear... brand new tire, but still uses the multicell compound... so kind of an unknown.

I don't think the average driver could tell the difference between any of the top tier studless winter tires... they are ALL very good...
 
Originally Posted By: Quattro Pete
Finally got them installed. They felt somewhat harsh riding on the way back home from the shop. Alas, the shop overinflated them, which I corrected when I got home.



Tire gauge, anyone....?

My last new winter tires came home from the shop feeling firm as well...

After leaving them to cool for about 3 hours, i checked the pressure... yep, 50 psi... ! Spec is 33... ?!?!
 
Mine were all at around 40 PSI when the shop installed them. 40 PSI is what's called for to seat the bead, so I guess they just left it at that without letting some air out afterwards. Spec is 32 for me.
 
Originally Posted By: Nebroch
They seem to have re-badged the older R, have you seen these in any tyre shop?

http://fostertire.blogspot.fi/2014/10/hercules-new-hakkapeliittaerr-avalanche.html


The Hercules Avalanche R G2. Is Avalanche really a reassuring name for a winter tire??? I used the Hercules online "dealer finder", and there are about 5 Hercules tire dealers within 20 miles of me! But I never heard of the brand until today. I assume Nokian has a patent on the R tread design?
 
Is a tread design patentable... maybe for a few years...? I know a bunch of the Walmart winters are identical to various BLIZZAKS.

Or maybe NOKIAN just sold the molds, who knows... bet you the rubber compound is not the same... or even close...!
 
Originally Posted By: geeman789
Is a tread design patentable...


Yes, a tread design is patentable (design patent) and it last 14 years.

But be aware that many tread patterns look alike and it has been argued successfully that small differences can be enough to render a particular tread design as non-infringing.
 
Just installed R2's on my new to me 2006 AUDI A6 Avant (w/197K mi!). I ran them the last two Winters on my '95 AUDI S6 Avant and have been amazed at their traction in really slick conditions, i.e. glare ice & polished hard pack. I've been driving 35-40K mi yearly in the snow belt of Central NY. I've run Nokians almost exclusively since discovering them 25 yrs. ago.As a high performance snow tire I think they are the best. The Vredestein Wintrac Extreme is a slightly better handling tire in dry/wet conditions but not as much real snow tire grunt or glare ice stopping ability! The Hakka 7/8 are normally studded and slightly better in deep snow and also ice conditions. Someone in this thread suggested unstudded Hakka 7/8's. I had also considered this option and talked to Nokian Tech Support & a very experienced Nokian dealer/ice racer. Both told me that the R2 was better on ice & most snow conditions than unstudded Hakka 7/8. Another advantage to Nokian R2 is the fact that the tread compound is not layered, ie. sticky part on outside as are some other more commonly available "Brand Name" snow tires. Many of those tires wear rapidly in warmer conditions. My old Volvo mechanic has some "snow bird" customers who were amazed at the rapid wear they experienced after 3 mos. in the South with some of those "Brand Name" snows! BTW I always go to slightly narrower snows, in this case 225/55x16 vs 245/45/17 Summer's.
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R2 are not "high performance snow tire". They are studless.
WR G3 is the closest thing Nokian makes to performance winters.

Krzys
 
I'm talking "Snow" tire! Admittedly the WRG3 has a Snowflake rating with better snow capability than any other All-Season tire. I've used WRG2's and they were far inferior in snow/ice condition to the R's & Rsi's I was using on other vehicle's at the time. Yes, the WR G3 is a higher performance "Winter" tire. Tomayto-Tomato! If you want the best performance in snow/ice without going to a studded tire the R2 is the way to go. I don't know what kind of particles Nokian is embedding in these tires & they're not detectible to the eye or by feel but they do work! The stopping ability on ice is amazing! I drove the same stretch of ice-covered road w/wife's '99 AUDI A6 Avant w/205/60x16 Nokian Rsi's and then within an hour with my '95 S6 Avant w/205/55x16 R2's and couldn't believe how much more stopping power they had! YMMV
 
Originally Posted By: stuffinder
……….I don't know what kind of particles Nokian is embedding in these tires & they're not detectible to the eye or by feel but they do work! The stopping ability on ice is amazing!………..


My set of R2s are good on ice, but definitely not amazing, especially around 30*F.
 
Have you found any other non-studded tire that was better? Perhaps amazing was too strong a word! How about measurably better than anything else I've used?
 
In the last 2 years of ice testing results I have seen from Russian and Scandinavian sources, sometimes the R2 is measurably better, sometimes it is not. Michelin and Bridgestone Blizzak are very, very close to the R2 on ice. The R2 is not as dominant over its studless peers in ice testing as is the Hakka8 over its studded peers.

For example in this years NAF test report, the Xi3 was slightly superior to the R2 in the ice braking and ice acceleration tests, slightly behind in the lap time on the ice handling track, and equal to the R2 in subjective rating on the ice course.
 
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Originally Posted By: carman594
What about the General Altimax Arctic? Those are supposed to be phenomenal tires, I wonder how they stack up to the R2 and Xi3.


they are a great old tire. Continental, when they decided that the General tires needed a snow tire, went to Gislaved, and rehashed the Nord Frost 3.

WHile they work great unstudded, they were not optimized in design to be unstudded, unlike the R2, Xi3, WS80, etc.
 
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