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Since the overall performance of all cars depends heavily on the tires, I'm kind of surprised there isn't a running thread (at least, that I could find) for this topic. We can discuss and debate the top tires in each category; the best "bang for the buck" tire in each category; etc. Race tires, summer tires, HP all-seasons, touring, winter, off road, etc. Goons can discuss their experience with their own personal choice of rubber. It could have a silly thread title like "Tires: Where the rubber meets the road" or "Steel-Belted Radial Insanity" or whatever. To start off with, I'll ask AI's opinion on using summer performance tires for year round duty on a daily driver. For much of the '90s and early 2000s, I drove cars on summer tires like Goodyear Eagle GS-C or BFG KDW through the winter, without any real worries or problems. (In central Texas, there is rarely enough snow or ice on the road to matter...but it does get below freezing sometimes.) But summer tires now come with dire warnings about not using them when it's cold, even if it's dry. If you lived in a climate where it was warm most of the year, but had maybe 15 days a year below freezing would you go with the summer tire or settle for a good all-season?
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Apr 20, 2019 07:42
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Do the people around you buy winter tires? Does your insurance or the law expect you to drive winter tires? Where I live people drive summer tires almost all year around, except if they live in a small town where the roads aren't serviced as frequently. Once temperatures get around 4 or 5 degrees Celsius, traffic just slows down a lot. Imo winter tires is a bit like herd immunity. If you are the only one getting them, you have very limited benefits - others will still drive super slow because they don't have them, and they will still crash into you in the worst case. So I'd do what the people around me do. (For the record I have all seasons; there are usually one or two weeks or so where the mornings may be below freezing, but it's super rare to encounter snow or ice and getting extra storage for a second set of tires isn't worth the bother)
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Apr 20, 2019 15:01
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Number_6 posted:Since the overall performance of all cars depends heavily on the tires, I'm kind of surprised there isn't a running thread (at least, that I could find) for this topic. We can discuss and debate the top tires in each category; the best "bang for the buck" tire in each category; etc. Race tires, summer tires, HP all-seasons, touring, winter, off road, etc. Goons can discuss their experience with their own personal choice of rubber. It could have a silly thread title like "Tires: Where the rubber meets the road" or "Steel-Belted Radial Insanity" or whatever. 15 days below freezing would probably be enough to persuade me not to run a summer tire, but I've almost always lived in places where it snows in the winter and thus have summer tires and winter tires. I strongly disagree that winter tires only benefit you if other people have them. Yes, other people can still do stupid things, but you are better able to react to those stupid things, and you are less likely to do something stupid yourself. I used to run snow tires in NC since I had them anyway, and the two times a year that it was snowy and icy it was a massive benefit, even if other people did not have snow tires and were crashing all over the place like the idiots they were.
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Apr 20, 2019 15:58
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I'd have a set of summers and a set of winters and use the winters for the months were it get's a bit colder and be confident that I'd have better tires than 90% of other people on the road. But I'm a Swede and deeply indoctrinated in the "summers n' winters set" thing. Maybe a great all season tire if it almost never snows and you can stay home if it does. But summers >>>>> all seasons at summer temperatures. Edit: We don't even have all season tires for sale that are approved because they are "poo poo" according to the government. A ton of people advertise cars with all seasons, but in reality they are just winter tires that they run all year round (which is legal). Oh and to contribute. I run Goodyear EfficientGrip Performance on both my cars. I chose it because of the good reviews combined with decent price and low dB. I wouldn't say it's super quiet, but good all around. I drive <200hp cars though, so a real performance car might do better on Pilot Sports etc. MrOnBicycle fucked around with this message at 16:30 on Apr 20, 2019 |
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Apr 20, 2019 16:22
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I think it's a good idea to have a spare set of wheels with winters if you think you might need them - you don't have to swap them on if it's mild weather, and it frees you up to have more performance oriented tyres for normal use without worrying about how they handle cold weather. I didn't put my winters on this year, didn't feel the need (I'm running Michelin PS4 on my daily). Depends on the car, too, some stuff's not quite so bad in mild winter weather, other stuff can be loving awful to the point it won't move.
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Apr 20, 2019 22:10
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:I strongly disagree that winter tires only benefit you if other people have them. Yes, other people can still do stupid things, but you are better able to react to those stupid things, and you are less likely to do something stupid yourself. I used to run snow tires in NC since I had them anyway, and the two times a year that it was snowy and icy it was a massive benefit, even if other people did not have snow tires and were crashing all over the place like the idiots they were. Yeah I could have worded that better. I think this winter I had one or two mornings where the roads where slippery. A couple of years back there was a layer of snow on the road and you saw people slowly sliding over the residential streets in the general direction of their direction. I probably shouldn't talk too much about actual winter conditions.
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Apr 20, 2019 23:27
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I live in Wisconsin, but no one that I know actually swaps out winter tires from all seasons. But, just today I also bought a new Subaru Outback - This will be the fanciest car I've ever owned and I want to take care of it. I'm also a little worried that the all wheel go will tempt me to overdrive conditions in winter. Thinking about getting a set of steel rims and some winters - What do you do to store these things though? stack them up in the basement for 8 months of the year? How huge of a difference do these really make, if you've spent your life driving without them?
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Apr 21, 2019 00:17
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Try them and find out. Winter tires are a necessary evil imho. I went to school in upstate New York, where there's ice on the roads for several months. I ran studded tires for years, and now just run regular winter tires on the Fit during the winter. It handles better than my truck.
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Apr 21, 2019 00:20
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Continental extreme winter contacts coupled with all wheel drive is like using a god mode video game cheat. We put the winter tires on our 9-7x and we leave all terrain tires (Cooper Discoverer AT3 4S) on the suburban and they are fine for winter duty, but when it gets extra cold and the roads are extra slippery there is a huge difference when I drive both of our vehicles back to back. The high performance all seasons on the 9-7x are absolutely useless in the snow.
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Apr 21, 2019 01:09
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I find those comments disturbing and appealing and I am so curious I want to try it. But I was more wondering about this kind of thing,Tire Rack posted:Place each clean and dry tire in its own large, opaque, airtight plastic bag (such as lawn and garden bags) for storing. Avoid allowing any moisture to remain and remove as much air as practical (some drivers even use a vacuum cleaner to draw out as much as possible). Close the bag tightly and tape it shut. This places the tire in its own personal mini-atmosphere to help reduce oil evaporation. I mean, assuming they were good for 40k miles and I ran them for 4 months of the year, that's 10 years life, a good 2/3 of which are spent in storage. Is this even something to worry about or just go full ham and laugh at the suckers who don't have AWD and snow tires?
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Apr 21, 2019 02:08
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Raised by Hamsters posted:I live in Wisconsin, but no one that I know actually swaps out winter tires from all seasons. But, just today I also bought a new Subaru Outback - This will be the fanciest car I've ever owned and I want to take care of it. I'm also a little worried that the all wheel go will tempt me to overdrive conditions in winter. Thinking about getting a set of steel rims and some winters - What do you do to store these things though? stack them up in the basement for 8 months of the year? How huge of a difference do these really make, if you've spent your life driving without them? Remember winter tires are not just for snow. Their main advantage especially places like Wisconsin is that they stay soft and grippy in sub zero temperatures. If you can find yourself some Sumitomo Ice Edges, they are cheap and really decent. Pro tip. Thoes of you who are extra fancy and trying to get hakkapeliittas you gotta jump on them early cause the US only gets a small supply every winter and they go quick. Preoptopus fucked around with this message at 02:25 on Apr 22, 2019 |
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Apr 22, 2019 02:17
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The General Arctic Altimax is another decent, cheap winter tire.
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Apr 22, 2019 03:18
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Anybody in this thread have any direct experience with either the Michelin Pilot A/S 3+ or General GMAX AS-05? Based on Tire Rack etc., the Michelin seems to generally get the best reviews for an all-season performance tire; but some owners comment on tread noise and/or a somewhat harsh ride. Reviews of the GMAX AS-05 tend to comment on tire noise and sometimes on flat-spotting when the car sits, which is a phenomenon I particularly hate.
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Apr 22, 2019 05:25
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Number_6 posted:Anybody in this thread have any direct experience with either the Michelin Pilot A/S 3+ or General GMAX AS-05? Based on Tire Rack etc., the Michelin seems to generally get the best reviews for an all-season performance tire; but some owners comment on tread noise and/or a somewhat harsh ride. Reviews of the GMAX AS-05 tend to comment on tire noise and sometimes on flat-spotting when the car sits, which is a phenomenon I particularly hate. No direct experience but looking at both seams like you would get longer life span out of the general at a better price point and they have more siping than the Michelin. Looking at the tread design of the michelin i would bet they suck rear end in snow if that matters to you.
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Apr 22, 2019 06:00
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:15 days below freezing would probably be enough to persuade me not to run a summer tire OP said central Texas. Depends on the part of central TX they're in, but at least in Austin, the overnight low gets below freezing for about that many nights all winter. It warms back up during the day; it's not continuous. Once you get deep into what's known as the Hill Country, winters can be a bit colder. I've only lived in central TX since August (though I've spent a couple of winters in Hill Country), but this past "winter" seemed like fall in north TX. Which really doesn't get that much colder, but north TX (DFW) is prone to ice storms when they do get winter precip (DFW is prone to more interesting weather in general...). Central TX actually has some hills, once you get west of Austin.
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Apr 22, 2019 06:07
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sharkytm posted:The General Arctic Altimax is another decent, cheap winter tire. Seconding this, they're my go to winter tire since Blizzaks got lovely.
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Apr 22, 2019 15:25
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I just put the cheapest tires I could find on my Volvo. Sentury something-or-anothers from discount tire, they were $40/tire. Just something that isn't as dangerous as the nine-year-old rock-hard bald tires I had on there. I considered getting used tires but dry rot is my biggest concern since these won't see many miles at all on them, and at that price they're basically there with used tires anyway. I don't have a review for them other than that they're serving their purpose so far.
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Apr 22, 2019 15:54
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Preoptopus posted:Remember winter tires are not just for snow. Their main advantage especially places like Wisconsin is that they stay soft and grippy in sub zero temperatures. I thought the supply issues cleared up since they opened the Russian plant? Or is it just that your distributors are maintaining false scarcity to gently caress with the market?
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Apr 22, 2019 17:11
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I've recently grabbed a set of these for a '10 Fit and they seem to be doing the job. I had OEM tires (Dunlop SP Sport 7000) bought new when I got the car a few years ago, mostly useless on anything but dry roads and showing signs of dry rotting after only 4 years. I used a set of Blizzak WS60s on steelies for winter which performed extremely well but they only have one season left in them at best, I'm interested to see how the Quatracs handle winter. The reviews seem to be universally positive in every category, plus they were cheaper than the inferior Dunlops. They've only been on the car for a few weeks but I'm happy with them so far, handling in the dry/wet is excellent and they're very quiet. I'd never even heard of Vredestein before but I guess they've been making tires in the Netherlands for about a century now, and they're not even made out of wood!
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Apr 22, 2019 17:25
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Not sure I would guess the latter. Denver is one of the largest tire hubs in the country and I can only find them from one distributor.
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Apr 22, 2019 17:26
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I've seen Vredestein tires on a lot of vintage British cars, they come in the right sizes and have period correct looking tread. They've also been sponsoring tire tests in Grassroots Motorsports recently so maybe they're trying to expand here in NA.
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Apr 22, 2019 18:02
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RE winter tire chat, I ran Hankook iPikes on my 4Runner when I had it, and they were very chewy. A+ Would buy again.
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Apr 22, 2019 18:50
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Out of curiosity I looked up if tire siping is still a thing and it seems that it is. So Michelin drops a few million on R&D when developing something like the Pilot A/S 3+ but you're telling me that you're gonna make the tire better with this one trick they don't want you to know about which is cutting the gently caress out of the tread? Yeah, okay. Maybe on very worn tires (which you should replace) or some kind of bottom of the barrel budget tire with a tread designed by a coven of doulas. On actual tire talk: I got a set of Potenza RE980s which replaced a set of OEM Dunlop SP5000s. The RE980s handle better and have excellent wet and dry traction but they're very noisy. Another unpleasant surprise was a very real fuel efficiency hit of about 1.2 MPG, at least as far as the car tells me. A tire's rolling resistance can impact fuel consumption but I always figured that sort of thing was in the range of 1% or less but this hit is more like 3%. Oh, and for snow/ice they won't get you killed, but Bridgestone's claims of, "this time we get snow/ice traction right!" don't really pan out. Every manufacturer seems to make similar claims whenever they refresh their all season products but I don't think I've ever come across one that can get anywhere near a dedicated snow tire for performance.
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Apr 22, 2019 19:17
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Fabulousity posted:Out of curiosity I looked up if tire siping is still a thing and it seems that it is. So Michelin drops a few million on R&D when developing something like the Pilot A/S 3+ but you're telling me that you're gonna make the tire better with this one trick they don't want you to know about which is cutting the gently caress out of the tread? Yeah, okay. Maybe on very worn tires (which you should replace) or some kind of bottom of the barrel budget tire with a tread designed by a coven of doulas.
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Apr 22, 2019 21:17
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Fermented Tinal posted:Seconding this, they're my go to winter tire since Blizzaks got lovely. What's wrong with Blizzak? I have WS80s on my Mazda and they're awesome. Preoptopus posted:What's worse is that tire shaving is a thing. Don't wanna replace all 4 tires on your awd cause of a screw in or near the sidewall. Some shops will shave a brand new tire down to match your other tread depths. What's wrong with that? Number_6 posted:Since the overall performance of all cars depends heavily on the tires, I'm kind of surprised there isn't a running thread (at least, that I could find) for this topic. We can discuss and debate the top tires in each category; the best "bang for the buck" tire in each category; etc. Race tires, summer tires, HP all-seasons, touring, winter, off road, etc. Goons can discuss their experience with their own personal choice of rubber. It could have a silly thread title like "Tires: Where the rubber meets the road" or "Steel-Belted Radial Insanity" or whatever. I just use all-season tires for my summer tires because just driving on the street they're good enough for me. I still blow by everybody on the outside lane of the on-ramp. edit: I got Continental PureContact LS for my Mazda 3. (205-50/17 I believe)
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Apr 22, 2019 22:49
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the PS4S is gods own tire
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Apr 22, 2019 23:09
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Modern tire design has it all wrong: Also I feel like the OP really ought to have a screen cap from the movie Rubber.
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Apr 23, 2019 00:29
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Raised by Hamsters posted:I live in Wisconsin, but no one that I know actually swaps out winter tires from all seasons. But, just today I also bought a new Subaru Outback - This will be the fanciest car I've ever owned and I want to take care of it. I'm also a little worried that the all wheel go will tempt me to overdrive conditions in winter. Thinking about getting a set of steel rims and some winters - What do you do to store these things though? stack them up in the basement for 8 months of the year? How huge of a difference do these really make, if you've spent your life driving without them? I lived in Madison for 5 years. 4 of them were spent in a VW GTI on all seasons (Continental DSWs). One of those years was spent in a Cayman, with dedicated summer and winter tires. The Cayman was by far the better winter car.
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Apr 23, 2019 15:11
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Charles posted:What's wrong with Blizzak? I have WS80s on my Mazda and they're awesome. Since the WS70 their performance has suffered, especially in slush-on-ice conditions. Some would argue the WS50 was where they peaked. Altimax Arctics are cheaper and outperform them. Fermented Tinal fucked around with this message at 15:29 on Apr 23, 2019 |
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Apr 23, 2019 15:26
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I've spent a lot of time on both and the ws80 has noticeably more grip on hardpack snow and ice. It has better rubber and more small biting edges. In deeper snow and slush yes I would give the general the edge as it has bigger voids between the tread blocks. I expect you'd have a similar experience with any of the the other "performance" winter or ice-traction oriented treads.
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Apr 23, 2019 16:37
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Fabulousity posted:Also I feel like the OP really ought to have a screen cap from the movie Rubber. 
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Apr 23, 2019 17:36
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jamal posted:I've spent a lot of time on both and the ws80 has noticeably more grip on hardpack snow and ice. It has better rubber and more small biting edges. In deeper snow and slush yes I would give the general the edge as it has bigger voids between the tread blocks. I expect you'd have a similar experience with any of the the other "performance" winter or ice-traction oriented treads. Hardpack and Ice you wanna get into the stud territory and sorry if you live in a state that outlaws it.
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Apr 24, 2019 04:54
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Goons, is this repairable? gut says yes, but...looking at tread depth might be time to replace all four anyways?    At least I had a helper:
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Apr 30, 2019 23:15
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I'd say it probably is, yes.
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Apr 30, 2019 23:46
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Yeah that looks fixable.
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May 1, 2019 00:22
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I never did get around to making that What anyone should be able to patch/What I'd have patched normally/what I'd have patched in a pinch with special techniques/what should never be patched diagram, did I? (IIRC it's cause it was a pain in the rear end to find a quality image to start from) That rock punch is totally ok to patch, though.
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May 1, 2019 02:05
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Thanks for the confirmation guys. I'll try and hit the local shop after dropping kids off in the AM. If I can just finish this season on those tires, I'll be happy.
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May 1, 2019 02:24
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Of course got a flat tire on my rear left. Brand new Goodyears as well. Seems to be a slow leak. Tire places and mechanics that do tires here do something they call (directly translated) "umbrella repairs" that are supposed to be permanent. Might be hard to answer, but can tire repairs generally be trusted? It's about 40-50% of the cost of a new tire. Also, my car has one of those lovely repair kits so I am praying for it to for once work and get me to a tire shop...
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May 2, 2019 17:19
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MrOnBicycle posted:Of course got a flat tire on my rear left. Brand new Goodyears as well. Seems to be a slow leak. Umbrella repair sounds like what I would call a patch-plug. Its literally a patch on the end of a stem of rubber, and it is the only proper tire repair. If they are doing that type of repair and doing it the right way it is 100% trusty. Modus Man fucked around with this message at 03:33 on May 3, 2019 |
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May 2, 2019 21:49
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The cost being 40-50% of a new tyre sounds a bit off.
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May 2, 2019 21:52
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