Have a Focus 1.8 diesel currently with P6000's on the rears, and have had a little adventure with Avon Z3's on the front, as that's all the tyre place had that fitted after some little s**t slashed mine.
Not impressed with the grip on the Avons, they are a little light on the wet, and sometimes they will let go quick quickly with little warning. Grip is worse IME than the P6000 I had originally. Swap front and back round and the handling improves greatly until the back end decides it's going to step out and then it's a pain trying to get it back.
I reckon I will go though another full set on the front before the rears are ready for a change. Do people think I better off going back to p6000 on the front and matching all them up again or are there better tyres around for similar or a little more money? Guy at work swears by Uniroyal Rallye wet tyres but I would have though a soft rain tyre would get shredded very fast, especially with a torquey diesel doing the driving. Others have recommended Firestones, and I drove a Mondeo for a couple of days with continental EcoContact which did feel very good in the wet - no idea what tyre life was like though.
Not so long ago an average family road car like a Cortina, Granada, Escort etc would only pull about 0.8g in the dry and maybe 0.65 or 0.7g in the wet. It took a supercar to get close to 1g in the dry. The advances in both suspension systems and tyre technology in the last 15/20 years are staggering. Nowadays you can have an inexpensive family car like a Focus which will corner as fast as a Lotus or Porsche could in the 80's or early
90s.
The Goodyear Eagle F1 GSD3 is the current state of the art in the wet. It pulls higher cornering G in the wet than most tyres do in the dry. 0.91g in the wet which is frankly ridiculous and 0.95g in the dry on their BMW 330 test cars. They also last for ever according to feedback I've seen so clearly it isn't just a matter of them being made out of soft compound rubber to get the grip. There still aren't that many tyres around that will pull more than 0.9g in the dry and 0.8g in the wet on a medium range car so the GSD3 is massively ahead of the pace. So far ahead in fact that I doubt Goodyear needed to go that far to be competitive. They could have held back a good chunk of the wet performance in order to bring it out in a couple of years time for the next generation of tyres.
All the recent supposedly high performance Avons (anything with a Z in the name) have been fairly grim for both grip and tyre life until suddenly they upped the ante with the Avon Tech M500 which is getting rave reviews in the states, especially considering the price. Not sure you can even get those over here though but at only $80 a corner it might even be worth importing them.
My own Focus 2.0 has the 205/50/16s so it might not be a direct comparison to a 1.8 but with Michelin Pilot Primacy's on the front and Firestones on the back it corners so fast wet or dry I still haven't really got used to it after 9 months. The back goes first in the wet so I'd say the Firestones aren't quite the equal of the Michelins but you have to be trying so hard to get to that point it's pretty academic. I shudder to think what it would be like on a nice matched set of GSD3s all round. I doubt I'd be brave enough to find the limits on those to be honest. Most people have still never driven a car that's capable of cornering at 0.9g even in the dry and trying to mentally adapt to being able to do that in the wet with even more to come in the dry is quite a challenge.
If anyone living in the appropriate area wants a challenge I have two test corners that are easy to find. The slow speed one is the roundabout on the A40 at Beaconsfield by junction 2 of the M40. Coming round that from the west you peel off onto the A40 dual cariageway taking you to Gerrards Cross. In 17 years and maybe 6 different cars I'd never cracked 50mph round that in the dry until getting the Focus. I'm up to 58mph at the moment with my lack of bottle rather than the car's limits stopping me going faster.
The higher speed corner is the long sweeping dual lane 270 degree sliproad linking the M25 northbound to the M40 eastbound at junction 16 so you need to be coming up from the Heathrow direction to use it. Previous limit in anything was 70 mph and that's now up to 80 mph in the Focus but be careful because it tightens a bit right at the end so if you are close to the limit half way round you're going to have a brown trouser moment 50 yards later. I only got brave enough to hit 80 the once because a guy in an Audi I'd been following was trying very hard round there in the outside lane one day and in a mad fit of bravado I went past him on the inside but my hands were still shaking when I got home 5 minutes later. The car itself still had plenty left but I'm neither good enough nor brave enough to find it at those sorts of speeds on public roads.
I've got Pilot Primacys on my Focus which are great but when I needed to put new rubber on my Mondeo, it had one of those less common (expensive) sizes and the Primacys were going to be very expensive so I put Firestone TZ200's on after reading various reviews. They have been fine so far although admittedly I don't throw the Mondeo around like I do with the Focus.
I use Continental Premium Contacts on the front of my 206 2.0 HDi and they've never given me any concerns. Tyre life is about 22,000 with a mix of motorway and rural lanes.
We had a 307 SW 2.0 petrol where I replaced the standard fit Dunlop SP2000's with Conti Premium Contacts after 17,000 miles. The improvement was staggering, even over the Dunlops when they were new.
I use Continental Eco Contacts on the front of my wife's old ZX 1.4. This is not a quick car (!) but considering they were only £12 dearer than budgets, and as she daily travels muddy rural lanes I thought they were a good investment.
You should put the least grippy tyres on the front as as you've mentioned the oversteer can be tricky/impossible to control.
Check the tyre pressure & alignment. Different cars have different suspension set-ups and that is as important as the tyres that's on them so just becuase one car feels great doesn't mean the tyres will necessarily work great on another. Suggest you drive with a little more caution from now on.
I always had rwd cars, i love them, i get no torque steer and can apply the power better and push thru a bend, i can also control oversteer, its understeen that scares the shit out of me.
I used to travel M25S to M40W quite often, that's a fun one as well. Da Boss got told off there for going round on three wheels once in a Lotus - Mr Plod thought his driving was so good that he gave him three points. I think he was jealous cos the Volvo Plod was driving couldn't do that....:-)
I'll have a look for the Goodyears and see what price they are.
Another tyre test website.........www.tyretest.com/
A few car magazine tyre tests over the last couple of years have picked out the following as excellent in the wet...... Vredestein Ultrac Goodyear F1 GSD3 Continental Sport Contacts 2
I can vouch for Continental Premium Contacts being very grippy in the wet on a '94 Nissan Primera. Also heard good things about Uniroyal Rain Sport 1's and Goodyear Hydragrips.
I've got conti sport contact 2s and they suck in the wet on my car. Best ever tyre in my opinion was the Bridgestone S02. The S03 is a different tyre entrirely.
You said the car slides unexpectedly & that's not really very good for road safety now is it? Clearly you can't push the car as hard in the wet as with the other tyres & I was just hoping that you're remember that. I didn't realise I was being sanctimonious, rather just trying to share some experience.
be helpful if we all gave details of the car involved when =commenting on tyres, there is a difference in performance, wear and =noise from car to car and I for one would like to hear which tyres are =good on which car, for example, which tyres do readers reckon would be =the best for a 1.8 zetec Focus Hatchback 2000V.=20I have Avon Zv1 on at the moment 195/60 V rated.=20Don't want any lower profile than 60, car arrived with 55 profile after =my roadtest on 60's and the ride was much, much harsher. Had Conti Ecos =before that but got quite a bit of wheelspin when driving off in the wet =with them, the fuel consumption has been no different, the Avons were =cheaper, are directional and overall I am more pleased with them than I =was the Conti Ecos.=20Am looking to change in spring/early summer (all 4 probably), what would =anyone advise ?
if you are happy with what you had on, get another set different tyres do different things on different cars, so stick with what you think is best until you get the chance to swap them over if you are forking out for new tyres out of your own pocket, do you really want to be thinking "these are shit, I wish I had my P6's on again :("
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