Tyre Comments on various forums and review sites

[bendrick]

Needing two new front tyres due to wear I started having a nose around for prices and opinions / reviews of tyre makes.


Now I know that there are threads on here and every other forum on which tyres are best for the money etc including a recent one on this forum. Reviews and tests and cutomer feedback on Auto magazine websites.

Awards by various motoring organisations after testing etc etc.


Now I have in all my years driving and owning cars just pitched up at a tyre place and when the fitter says Budget or Premium? Have always just said budget, ( I don't mean a £25 tyre or a retread when they used to be available) but what turned out to be the depot standard £50 - £60 tyres I suppose as opposed to the Michelin, Dunlop, Pirelli stuff.


Anyway this time I did a bit more thorough research and was a little taken aback to see that the Current Chinese Comforser tyres on the front of my car had official E+ E ratings for economy and Wet Weather performance and decided to do a little better from now on in.

I do get the Tyres are essential safety meme and thought that I'd do as much research as possible this time and get at least tyres with a C ( economy) and A (Wet performance) ratings rather than a vauge tyre depot suggested budget brand this time.


After much internet searching and reading I plumped as starting to approach (and sometimes beating in tests ) premium brand quailty, two Falken FK510s.

As luck would have it a local to me tyre place which I used two months ago to fit an Apollo C+A to replace a back tyre, raved about Falken tyres at that time saying that they were the best value for money tyres about and were surprised at the Apollo tyres that I had found for £63 fitted through Black Circles being the same C+A rating as the Falkens that they recommend as they had never heard of Apollo and were a bit taken aback that the Apollo was cheaper at that time than the Falken that they stock.


Anyway having decided to up my game a touch on reading of the relative success of the Falkens in various auto magazine test reviews I looked at a fitted price on black circles and other similar sites to find that they were in general £86 or so fitted.

Not really expecting much difference I looked up the website of the aforementioned local firm that I had used the other month and was surprised to see that they are doing them for £62 fitted. A considerable saving to say the least and I'm booked in shortly.



Right bear with me here......The point that I actually wanted to raise here is not the actual price of tyres or whether or not I've copped a bargain, nor the relative merits of budget or premium tyres, wear or stopping distance etc ( although of course in an emergency stop I like anyone will appreciate every last reduced inch of stopping distance advantage)


But what has amazed me is the hundreds of comments from car drivers on the various websites in regards their experiences of certain tyre brands or models.


As mentioned I've always had budget tyres whether Chinese, Japanese or whatever and have tootled along with no particular problems ( maybe wear might be quicker on budgets causing a false economy anyway, who knows?)


And yet comment after comment at the base of articles on the various tyre tests etc have again and again come out with :-


Swopping over to X tyres has transformed my car

Put two Y tyres on the back axle it's, like I'm driving a new car.

Never buy this Z rubbish I could feel the car slipping away on tight corners until I changed mine over to XX brand now grips like glue.

For a premium brand XYZ they were fine in the dry but as soon a light shower arrived it was like I was driving on a skid pan swapped them out for ZYX brand and now feel safe.

Just bought YXZ brand at a fraction of the price of ZZZ brand what a difference! I finally feel safe on lane changing performance.

YYY brand never again! Changed over to YXYs and the wheel spins have stopped as I've finally got some decent grip.


Such and such tyres frightened the life out of me never felt more unsafe on the road.


Now feel safe when lane changing?"


......What on earths that about?





Now my point is I don't claim to be a speedster I tootle about round town but require a bit of zip when overtaking or to get out of a developing awkward situation, But despite the any old budget tyre supplied by different tyre fitters over the years I've never felt my car losing it on a tight bend, never felt my car transformed by a new tyre or running like a dog due to a tyre change.

I've never felt I was driving on a skid pan when it got a touch damp

I can't say that I've ever had a problem with screeching tyres ( Except when living in Edinburgh on the New town cobbles where all car tyres screech)


I can accept an a comment on an experience when an emergency stop avoiding a bump was felt to be much shorter due to a having decent tyres or an aquaplaning issue was avoided because you're on the best out there in tests.



But the rest of the comments which are out there in their hundreds make me wonder if I've been driving in a parallell universe to many drivers.

My cars just seem to have driven about fine on whatever tyres were fitted, how come so many others others experiences are so extremely different? And quite frankly alarming if their comments are to be believed.

[topman]

No you're not driving in a parallel universe, it's just people's opinions that are so subjective as to be meaningless hyperbole especially when it comes to tyres.


I totally ignore people's reviews when it comes to tyres and stick to proper tests.

[Brunty]

I just stick with Arrow speed tyres from Kwick fit, used them for years on Rover 800, BMW 3 series and Rover 75. Good speed rating, good load rating and had 2 fitted last month for £118.00. Can't go wrong.

[Heddy]

The comments are for 'dramatic effect' and to be taken with a pinch of salt. A bit like 'ice was so bad I skidded all over the road', No, I don't skid all over the road, I'm a better driver than that, I don't skid at all.

[Tourist]

Hello Bendrick,


You've echoed my thoughts entirely and also ended up with the tyres that I use as well!


As topman says, you can take a lot of what's said about tyres with a huge pinch of salt. A lot of it is complete rubbish. The only time I've ever found that a new set of tyres has transformed a car is with my old Rover 45. The tyres that were on it when I bought it were cheap re-treads and were extremely noisy and out of shape. New tyres made a huge difference, but ANY new tyres would have!!


Anyway, good luck with the Falkens, I've used them on Maestros, Jaguar XJS, Rover 45 and now my 75. Can't fault them - to sum them up I'd say that Falken offers premium quality at budget price.

[motornoter]

It's true that much of what you read is too subjective to be useful. My view is, if you have a choice, go for the best wet road grip rating you can afford and, if possible, fit winter tyres from November to April. Who cares if the tyre's grip in the dry is 3% worse than the next man's - accidents happen when it's wet and cold, so if you've got the best tyres in those conditions, you stand a chance of avoiding the accident.
Personal experience has been mostly with my everyday Jaguar X-type 2.2 (front wheel drive, notoriously poor grip in wet and ice). I changed to Pirelli Cinturato Blues (only available at the time online from mytyres.co.uk) which had A+ wet road rating and the difference was really noticeable even compared to decent quality standard Pirelli Cinturatos. The car had traction control as standard because they are so prone to spinning the front wheels when accelerating in the wet - suddenly I could go just as hard in the wet as the dry, the traction control was hardly necessary. Great tyres, but the X had a habit of taking the inner edges off them, through to the canvas when only half worn. Tracking was checked and rechecked, no wear in the suspension, maybe it was just the way I drove it...
Anyway, point is, wet road grip ratings are real, so go with the best you can get. They might wear out a little quicker but if they keep your car on the road it's worth it. Unless you drive very high mileages, you probably won't notice the difference anyway.
Winter tyres are equally beneficial - it's worth picking up a secondhand set of wheels, get the winter tyres on them then you don't have to pay someone to keep swapping tyres twice a year. On lighter modern cars, which are often massively over-tyred in my opinion, it's worth keeping the winter tyres on all year round. I did that with a modern Fiat 500 - grip was superb all year round, including mountain-storming in the Alps and Pyrenees in mid-summer, and tyre life was fine. These little cars with wide tyres look 'cool' but are verging on dangerous in very wet conditions as the weight per square inch of contact surface is very low, so when you hit standing water, they aquaplane - major accident time. With winter tyres on, you're far, far safer as they disperse the water much more efficiently (bigger gaps between the rubber sipes = more weight per square inch of contact). Not so good on the X-type though as it wore winter tyres out in 5000 miles in the summer - too much torque & weight for the softer rubber to cope with, hence the need for two sets of wheels.
Hope this helps!

[macafee2]

ok here is a pinch of salt story. Some years ago I had Bridgestone 020 tyres on my Suzuki 1200 Bandit motorbike. At the time I did not know the tyres were a problem and when they wore out replaced them with the same. They were terrifying. If I went into a corner I was never sure if I was going to come out but I only knew this once I changed them for something else. It was like riding along the top of a round pipe and the bike trying to slip down the left or the right. After a few years when the tyres needed changing again the shop did not have 020's but 023's so these were fitted.

If anyone else were to say this, I perhaps like you would think they were talking tosh. I rode 50 yards and the bike was transformed. It rode straight, it made me feel safe in corners, I could relax and so perhaps some comments are truly how people feel.

Perhaps some of the ratings the tyre companies show against a tyre can be taken with a pinch of salt I don't know but as a biker I perhaps have a better appreciation of what can happen when tyres lose grip then someone that has only ever driven a car and so for that reason, performance is probably top of my list.

I don't drive to the limit of the tyre and I don't want to be driving all the time near the limit of the tyre (low grip limit tyre) because if I'm always near the limit, what's left for an emergency or poor conditions? I want there to be plenty left in reserve for such times. I compare this to worn tyres, I don't wait for legal limit before changing them as I could be out and about in very heavy rain, I change them early so I know no matter what tomorrow is like I still have a decent tyre below me.
Perhaps the gap in front of you when you drive is another example, leave a big gap, planet of time to stop. Leave a small gap and it can be scary but if you never have to stop abruptly you never know that small gap is a problem. don't wait to find out

macafee2

[bendrick]

Originally Posted by motornoter

It's true that much of what you read is too subjective to be useful. My view is, if you have a choice, go for the best wet road grip rating you can afford and, if possible, fit winter tyres from November to April. Who cares if the tyre's grip in the dry is 3% worse than the next man's - accidents happen when it's wet and cold, so if you've got the best tyres in those conditions, you stand a chance of avoiding the accident.
Personal experience has been mostly with my everyday Jaguar X-type 2.2 (front wheel drive, notoriously poor grip in wet and ice). I changed to Pirelli Cinturato Blues (only available at the time online from mytyres.co.uk) which had A+ wet road rating and the difference was really noticeable even compared to decent quality standard Pirelli Cinturatos. The car had traction control as standard because they are so prone to spinning the front wheels when accelerating in the wet - suddenly I could go just as hard in the wet as the dry, the traction control was hardly necessary. Great tyres, but the X had a habit of taking the inner edges off them, through to the canvas when only half worn. Tracking was checked and rechecked, no wear in the suspension, maybe it was just the way I drove it...
Anyway, point is, wet road grip ratings are real, so go with the best you can get. They might wear out a little quicker but if they keep your car on the road it's worth it. Unless you drive very high mileages, you probably won't notice the difference anyway.
Winter tyres are equally beneficial - it's worth picking up a secondhand set of wheels, get the winter tyres on them then you don't have to pay someone to keep swapping tyres twice a year. On lighter modern cars, which are often massively over-tyred in my opinion, it's worth keeping the winter tyres on all year round. I did that with a modern Fiat 500 - grip was superb all year round, including mountain-storming in the Alps and Pyrenees in mid-summer, and tyre life was fine. These little cars with wide tyres look 'cool' but are verging on dangerous in very wet conditions as the weight per square inch of contact surface is very low, so when you hit standing water, they aquaplane - major accident time. With winter tyres on, you're far, far safer as they disperse the water much more efficiently (bigger gaps between the rubber sipes = more weight per square inch of contact). Not so good on the X-type though as it wore winter tyres out in 5000 miles in the summer - too much torque & weight for the softer rubber to cope with, hence the need for two sets of wheels.
Hope this helps!

Well to be honest it was the wet weather rating for overall braking distance and handling that prompted me to upgrade to a more expensive A rated tyre ( although I seem to have found a budget type price for a better tyre in the end) than usual after I realised the very poor categorisation of the existing tyres on my car.

My current minor obsession with tyres was sparked by the thread on here about DOT markings on tyres that I had never heard about before and upon checking my tyres after reading the thread found that I had been riding around for a year since the purchase of my current car on a 15 year old Dunlop tyre. So well done to whoever put the thread up thank you for helping to alert me to such a scenario.

It was a little bit of a wake up call and as mentioned prompted my decision to maybe aim a touch higher in the quality stakes in the future.

I take with a little pinch of salt the economy rating as whilst there will be different rolling resistances how much fuel economy is really affected between the different ratings % wise would be fairly minimal I'd guess. And of course the more grip you get on a tyre the correlation to more rolling resistance is generally the case.

So a C+A rated tyre seems to me to be the best balance on a top Wet weather rated tyre.


As regards winter tyres I do get the theme but to be honest the likes of myself are unlikely to get a whole seperate set of wheels to store in a house such as mine with limited storage space and then change them over a couple of times a year. I would if I thought it was essential such as is needed (even a legal requirement) in countries with worse weather than us here.

With a bigger budget and more storage space I would do the winter tyre thing but in the meantime will settle for the better wet weather rating tyres than I have had fitted in the past.

Cheers

[bendrick]

Originally Posted by macafee2

ok here is a pinch of salt story. Some years ago I had Bridgestone 020 tyres on my Suzuki 1200 Bandit motorbike. At the time I did not know the tyres were a problem and when they wore out replaced them with the same. They were terrifying. If I went into a corner I was never sure if I was going to come out but I only knew this once I changed them for something else. It was like riding along the top of a round pipe and the bike trying to slip down the left or the right. After a few years when the tyres needed changing again the shop did not have 020's but 023's so these were fitted.

If anyone else were to say this, I perhaps like you would think they were talking tosh. I rode 50 yards and the bike was transformed. It rode straight, it made me feel safe in corners, I could relax and so perhaps some comments are truly how people feel.

Perhaps some of the ratings the tyre companies show against a tyre can be taken with a pinch of salt I don't know but as a biker I perhaps have a better appreciation of what can happen when tyres lose grip then someone that has only ever driven a car and so for that reason, performance is probably top of my list.

I don't drive to the limit of the tyre and I don't want to be driving all the time near the limit of the tyre (low grip limit tyre) because if I'm always near the limit, what's left for an emergency or poor conditions? I want there to be plenty left in reserve for such times. I compare this to worn tyres, I don't wait for legal limit before changing them as I could be out and about in very heavy rain, I change them early so I know no matter what tomorrow is like I still have a decent tyre below me.
Perhaps the gap in front of you when you drive is another example, leave a big gap, planet of time to stop. Leave a small gap and it can be scary but if you never have to stop abruptly you never know that small gap is a problem. don't wait to find out

macafee2

Well two wheeled bikes are a different matter of course.

Having owned bikes in the past I take the view that you'll always come off some day especially in wet weather and accept that the best tyres you can afford are essential to minimise how many times you do come off.

Mind you using the best tyres I could afford for my Jawa 897 speedway bike didn't really reduce the regularity that I carried out various carpentary procedures with my head on the safety fences around a number of tracks around the country in the past.

[bendrick]

Originally Posted by Tourist

Hello Bendrick,


You've echoed my thoughts entirely and also ended up with the tyres that I use as well!


As topman says, you can take a lot of what's said about tyres with a huge pinch of salt. A lot of it is complete rubbish. The only time I've ever found that a new set of tyres has transformed a car is with my old Rover 45. The tyres that were on it when I bought it were cheap re-treads and were extremely noisy and out of shape. New tyres made a huge difference, but ANY new tyres would have!!


Anyway, good luck with the Falkens, I've used them on Maestros, Jaguar XJS, Rover 45 and now my 75. Can't fault them - to sum them up I'd say that Falken offers premium quality at budget price.

Thats good to hear, just out of interest how do you find the Falkens wear mileage wise?

My current 75 and the previous one I had seem to eat tyres in pretty short order and the one comment that seemed to pop up quite a lot in regards to the Falkens was a poor wear rate although as previously mentioned by myself elsewhere, after complete rear suspension component replacement for the first time in 40 years of motoring i had a 4 wheel alignment carried out two months ago so hopefully that might sort out a few uneven wear issues.

To be honest as long as they might prove to be a touch safer in wet weather and general stopping distances I'll put up with not the best wear but would be delighted if they lasted a reasonable amount of thousand miles so that I'm not changing them every 5 minutes.