What Kind of Tires Do You Recommend?

[phrog]

Several years ago a young woman worked for me whose husband raced stock cars. He told me that Pirelli tires were great for racing because they were softer rubber and would grip better - less spinning and less sliding. However, for the same reason, soft rubber, they were not good for normal use for people who wanted to keep their tires a long while. (They would wear out quicker.)

Since I may have to buy some new tires soon, I started thinking about what this guy had told me about Pirellis and wonder what brand of tires you guys would recommend and why.

My car is a Honda Accord and I do a lot of slow, stop and go driving.

[Mildoc]

Drive a 2004 Toyota RAV4. I also drive on city roads, stop and go mostly. 2 sets of tires worn out each in 30K miles. I searched the net for RAV4 tire recommendations. Finally settled for 4 General Grabber HTS tires.

WOW! The ride was much quieter and smoother than even the RAV4 was was new it was unbelievable!

Just for this post I went out and checked the tread - down only 20% after 30K miles in about 3 years. Bit more than 6% a year. At that rate they will probably outlast me!

Of course, "your experience may vary." Depends on the weight of your car, how fast you start from a stop, how hard you brake and corner. At my age I take thing easy.

Hope this helps.

[leehljp]

Doc,
Thanks for that. I have been looking for a set of tires that are quiet as well as long lasting. Been thinking about that Bridgestone Toruanza tire in which the rubber is used to make those silent basketballs. Don't know how good that is but I do like quiet tires as well as long lasting.

[Cochese]

I haven't been a fan of a particular tire brand or specific make, until I got my last set of tires for my Acura. Continental ExtremeContact DWS. Very highly rated pretty much anywhere you look. When I bought mine almost two years ago, they were reasonably priced ($800 for 4, mount/balance/road hazard/tax).

[All Thumbs]

If you go to tirerack.com, you can sort results for your car based on the user reviews. Some people praise the Grabber HTS for tread longevity, for example. Others pan them for the same reason (I wonder if climate could be a factor). In any event, the Continental Cross Contact tires are the most highly rated tires at Tirerack.com, for your particular car.

[dbhost]

On my truck, I have run BFGoodrich All Terrain TAs, and Hercules Trail Digger MTs, both have served me very well.

On the Saturn, I have had Michelins which I HATED, Toyos which were okay, and Falkens which were recommended to me by a friend. I love the Falkens. Just wish I could recall the model name... Good traction, good wet weather handling, and they put up with our hot as a furnace summers here. No clue how they would do in snow and slop like that...

Around here, they get sold as a bargain brand by Discount Tire... I can't see how they are any worse than those high dollar Toyos, and in some ways (tread wear) they have been a LOT better...

FWIW, my tires are 185/65R15 and mounted, balanced, fees, taxes, road hazzard etc... $334.00 for a set of 4. And I am about to throw a fresh set on. (tires are rated to 40K, I have 50 on them...)

[dbhost]

If you go to tirerack.com, you can sort results for your car based on the user reviews. Some people praise the Grabber HTS for tread longevity, for example. Others pan them for the same reason (I wonder if climate could be a factor). In any event, the Continental Cross Contact tires are the most highly rated tires at Tirerack.com, for your particular car.

Climate, load, and driving style have a LOT to do with tire wear. Tires that would deal nicely with cold northern climates would end up in the scrap heap very quickly down here in Texas...

[cabinetman]

A few hints that might help. All tires have a treadwear rating, it's right on the tire. The lower the number (actually starts at zero) the softer the compound (wears faster, but rides better and has more traction). The higher the number the harder the compound (could be 200-400). There's quite a bit of info on the side of tires. In addition, you can tell when the tire was manufactured. This might be of some help...
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[greenacres2]

+1 on TireRack.com. Outstanding research stuff. We're running Bridgestone Potenza 960 (not sure on the 960 part) on my wife's Scion xB--great tire. On the other hand, the factory issued Bridgestone Turzana were absolute junk. On my little MB Coupe, it's Goodyear Triple-Treads for 9 months, and a Dunlop winter tire right now.

An alternative--find a REAL tire shop, and let them guide you. That comes at a price, but Sears, Costco, Wal-*art, etc are generally not my choice. Tires, in my opinion, rank right up there with seat belts for safety. Choose wisely Grasshopper!!

[tommyt654]

Its a no-brainer for me ,not only great tires,but supports local familys as well , http://www.siteselection.com/ssinsid...l/bd040621.htm ,That being said however I buy my tires online and have them shipped directly to my home,local Walmart will mount and balance for $10 each and I also buy my valve stems off e-bay in lots of 50 for about what they'll charge for 4 new ones installed, takes them by surprise and say here I have 4 new ones please install them, there mark-up is in the stem not installation

[ironhat]

Hey DB, what didn't you like about the Michellins? They are touted as a quality tire by many.

[chopnhack]

+1 what Cman said about treadwear. If you like the Pirellis, go and look at some that are available in your size. They are good tires, I have owned some, but IIRC they can be pricey and are usually oriented toward performance. If longevity is the key, treadwear is the indicator to compare.

[LCHIEN]

I don't think Pirellis are intrinsically "softer rubber" than other tires. But the Pirelli model your worker's husband chose were probably much softer than average for him to say that. I think that every tire maker has various rubber compounds at its disposal (and probably the same ones that others have). The engineering choice is then to pick a rubber which gives the best compromise of characteristics for each tire model they sell.

Generally speaking and I'm not a tire expert by any means (and I may have some of these wrong) but you have these tradeoffs:
softer rubbers give better cornering performance for high performance racing tires
softer tires have better grip and more effective treads for better all-weather performance
Softer tires have less road noise than hard but I think more important to noise is tread design, which hard or soft rubbers can trade off to effect quiet ride
Softer tires are equated with a more luxurious ride
Harder tires wear better and thus are longer life, lower cost of ownership
Tire material can also affect cost simply due to material
Tire materials can affect braking perforance
temperature can affect some rubbers' properties adversely more than others so there are winter-tires for cold weather
hard rubbers probably give marginally better fuel economy when added up consistently over the life of tires is somewhat significant.

so you see a tire design is a serious of compromises. The best thing to do is decide what you value most - performance, ride, economy, safety, speed and buy accordingly. A dealer can help chose the right combination (but of course only from the brands he carries), various auto publications and Consumer reports probably have ratings based upon tire type: economy, high performance, all-weather, winter, and luxury

Note: I have read where the stock tires on some exotic sports cars are cost-is-no-object and they provide great speed, cornering and braking performance and safety but they cost $2000 each ($8000 a set) and they only last about 5000 miles (depending upon how fast you drive and how hard you brake and corner). Of course, for a $300,000 sports car owner, that should not be an issue. Anyway thats the extreme end of trading performance for economy.

[durango dude]

My 4Runner has BFG All Terrains from discounttire.com

My wife has Michelin LTX AT tires on her Sequoia.

We're both pleased. Personally, I think that Michelin tires are over-priced ---- but they're clearly good tires.

Awhile ago, we drove a rental in the snow ----- and you could tell they weren't her tires.

[mpc]

Another +1 vote for www.tirerack.com Wonderful site for doing research. They carry many many brands so it's easy to make comparisons and make it easy to find tires specific to your vehicle.

The advice others have given about tread wear, hard vs. soft rubber, etc. pretty much are spot-on based on what (I think) I know. Soft rubber and/or tall sidewalls (the "/xx" part of the tire size --> bigger numbers = taller sidewalls) reduce the "jitter" in the ride at the expense of quick steering response and cornering precision. And soft rubber tends to wear faster. Those 80,000 mile warranty tires, and some "fuel saver" tires, use rubber that is darn hard and generally has less grip - emergency stopping distances likely increase with such tires. And they tend to ride harder too, passing lots of jitter into the vehicle.

Big tread blocks without small grooves/sipes work well in soft stuff (snow, mud) but tend to howl on the highway. Wide grooves between tread blocks - running across the tire rather than circumferentially - help snow traction. Lots of little grooves and big grooves around the circumference are good for wet traction but they make the whole tread "less stiff" so steering response tends to be a little worse. Most folks wouldn't even notice this however. (large tread blocks won't twist... tread blocks chopped up by lots of water removing grooves/sipes are torsionally less stiff in comparison so your initial steering input gets "wasted" by the tread blocks twisting around)

Snow tires use rubber blends that don't get stiff/hard in really cold weather which is what typically happens with summer tires. A stiff tire argues with the snow more reducing traction; the tire needs to have a little flex to help grab onto the packed snow ridges created by the grooves in the tread. However, snow tires used in hot weather are generally too soft and will wear rapidly. Also, snow tires are typically not rated for high MPH speeds. Basic tires are rated for 75 or 85 MPH maximum; the "H", "S", "T", "V", "Z", etc letters in 175/70SR-13 specify the speed rating. It used to be the higher the letter the higher the speed rating but that's no longer the case... a few previously unused letters got assigned to very high speed (supercar style) tires screwing up the system. The H/S/T/V/Z letters are the most common speed ratings and they at least obey the old rules. I forget what H is rated for. S is about 112 MPH, T is 115 MPH, V is up to 149MPH, and Z is up to around 180MPH if I remember correctly. ("R" means "Radial" tire as opposed to the old style bias ply tires..)

My experience:

* for winter driving (back when I lived in VA & MD) on a rear drive Corolla: Michelin all-season MXV and MXL series tires were great. I didn't compare them to pure snow tires nor to pure summer tires. I can say they gripped well on dry roads, I never got stuck in snow/ice including a long steep driveway to the apartments at school, and they handled dirt roads (I liked to rally race back then) fine. Wet roads? At the time I thought they did fine but when I got a Starion (rear drive sports car, think Japanese Porsche 924) and put Toyo Proxes summer tires on it the Starion clearly out-gripped the Toyota in the rain. Surprising given a) the Starion tires are wide so you'd think they'd hydroplane more, and b) the Proxes tires were a summer tire, not all-season. As for tire life... hard to say because that Corolla saw lots of tire chirping pull-outs. I've also put Toyo all season tires on this Corolla and they were fine. I once had Firestone S-211s on this car and they didn't even stay round - within a year they were distorted. (and the car did get an alignment done at tire installation - I always have that done)

* My Starion came with Yokohama A008R tires - supposedly a great summer performance oriented tire and rather expensive. They didn't last long - 18K miles or so. I replaced them with some other Yokos (A403's or something like that - less performance oriented) and they wore out quickly too. Then I switched to Toyo Proxes tires - much less expensive. And they CLEARLY out-gripped the Yokos in the dry, better steering response, rode better, were quieter, the Proxes tires lasted twice as long, and they have bloody amazing wet road grip. Beat the Yokos every way possible! I got the Starion after moving to SoCal so I have no idea how those tires would do in snow. A similar car with BF Goodrich tires "acted like it was on ice if somebody spit on the road" according to the owner. They sucked in pretty much any wet weather.

* My new Genesis sedan came with Dunlop tires. Noisy, lasted <18K miles, expensive, rode hard... not much to recommend them. I replaced them with Continental Extreme DWS tires and so far they've been MUCH better. Some folks on Genesis web forums complain the DWS tires result in the car having a pull to the right. Sounds odd but it's been seen often enough that I can't say it's a few disgruntled folks. A high-end Michelin touring tire also gets rave reviews on the Genesis forums.

I'm a fan of Toyo tires in general - I've been pleased with the all-season Toyos on my Corolla and the summer Toyo performance tires on the Starion. They didn't offer anything in the Genesis size so I went with the DWS which so far have been fine. I haven't tried many other brands so I can't say my brands are "the best" but they are darn good. A coworker loves the Kumhos he put on his G-35 coupe - and he drives it hard. Good grip, good ride, so far they've lasted through ~2 years of driving with plenty of tread left, and reasonably priced. Dunlop, Firestone, BFG, Yokohama, and Goodyear (college friends had trouble with Goodyears on import cars) are on my "never again" list.

mpc