Tire life

Easy. Those tires are probably so fraggin loud when your going down the road that your yelling to get your passengers to hear you.

Ted

ISO 9000? If so, all it means is that the manufacturer has (should have) procedure in place to ensure reproducibility at whatever quality level the manufacturer has decided.

I.e. once good. always good or once nasty, always nasty.

I have to say it, I can't understand why people always try to save that bit of money and increase their risk (even if funds are short). Plus, a cheap tyre may wear out quicker.

I certainly can't afford to buy cheap.

DAS

For direct contact replace nospam with schmetterling

In reality, it doesn't work that way, at least in the automotive world below first tier. In the automotive world, QS9000 is strictly a CYA for the first tier customer so that when a problem occurs, they have the smoking gun in the supplier's own documentation, or have proof that the supplier's documentation was falsified (good product went out, bad product was recieved at the customer - how could that be?) - the latter is often the case because the customer continued to take mandated cost cuts from the supplier (in what they pay per supplied wigdet) while requiring more and more bullshit quality documentation (as opposed to genuine quality documentation) that the supplier could no longer afford to hire the people to implement because of the cost cuts. The supplier's only remaining choice is to shut down (because all of their customers are automotive and require the same bullsh** system) or set up a streamline system of faking the documentation.

(Remember Firestone tires on Ford Explorers?)

In the same way, JIT gets bastardized. The first tier customer mandates that inventory control is JIT for them and down thru all tiers of the supply chain. In reality, that just means that the supplier hides a reserve stock so that when the inevitable sh** happens in the supply chain, they can continue to ship product and save the custmor's a**. The customer knows about this, but realizes that it keeps them out of hot water, so a lot of winking goes on. But it's the corporate religion, so know one dares speak up against it or change it.

As the saying goes: If you want economy, you have to pay for it.

Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with the letter 'x')

ISO9000 is a marketing tool. Having ISO9000 merely means that you have met the prescribed criteria: you have a quality manual, you have procedures that document what you do, an accredited body has audited your facility to ensure this is all in place, etc. etc. It has just about nothing to do with the real quality of products. Many organizations will not deal with suppliers that are not ISO certified; that's their motivation to get it. It's a joke.

I've audited more suppliers than I can remember. The first thing I do is politely accept a copy of their certification, thank them for it, put it among the papers I have collected and get on to really auditing their processes. The best feature it provides for me is confirmation that they should (at least in theory) have their processes documented.

Ken

I said it is to ensure reproducibility. (Whether it does for a particular company is another matter.)

And what is "real" quality?

DAS

For direct contact replace nospam with schmetterling

ISO 9000 doesn't ensure reproducibility - it ensures that you do what is documented, and you document what you do. The content of the documents and the design of the product could be as bad as you can imagine - as long as the paperwork is in order, you remain 9000 compliant. ISO 9000 compliance means you will have more information at hand to go back and figure out what happened if something doesn't go right. (And that is the basis of quality improvement). On developing a new product, ISO 9000 plays a much smaller role in product quality - taking a back seat to good design. While ISO 9000 is a nice idea, and it covers some important groundwork that really shoddy companies should have but don't have in place, 9000 is mostly a label. It can be useful to skim down a field of suppliers when the numbers are overwhelming, but to say that ensures a good product is a mistake, IMO. So as for tires, ISO 9000 means nothing to me. I still rely on good brand names. Crappy tires are an insult to everything rolling on them.

Dave

1) I did not say ISO 9000 plays a role in "good" quality other than reproducing it. The purpose of having the procedures in place is to ensure that processes are repeated. Of course if companies ignore their own procedures that's their look-out. Documentation is the basis of an ability to reproduce something. If you have no guideline of how to do something, how can you ensure that each batch/product is the same? If you just copy what you last did, howb you do you stop "creep"?

As you may know, when a business first starts writing SOPs (standard operating procedures) for getting the quality system registered under 9000, the SOPs should reflect actual practice, but I am sure a lot write what they think they should be. SOPs have to be updated regularly to take into account changes in practice.

2) It also has to be understood that if I as a client approve a sample product (at whatever level of quality), whether it is a tyre or a chemical or whatever, then I expect it to remain at that quality until there is an authorised change.

IIRC 9002 does not cover the development process whereas 9001 does. ISO

9001 itself has nothing to do with the design of a new product, just with the process of getting there.

At the end of the day you as a customer can select any criteria you like for deciding on a supplier. I don't think anything I have written precludes that.

I bet, though, that "good brand names" employ good, documented procedures to guarantee consistency.

This is not a place to start:

DAS

For direct contact replace nospam with schmetterling

Oops: Not a bad place to start...

DAS

For direct contact replace nospam with schmetterling

Long ago, I had Firestone 500 tires, the company's premium tire at the time and top-rated by Consumer Reports. All 4 developed tread separation because of moisture introduced during the manufacturing process, and the 500s were subject to recall, federal investigation, and class action lawsuit. Firestone replaced them with their successor, the 721, but all 4 of mine failed the same way in 40,000 miles. I decided not to take another chance, so I replaced them with a cheap brand called "Empire," and those tires were fine for about 60,000 miles.

snipped-for-privacy@hotmail.com proclaimed:

Forums you mean. And I cannot imagine why you posted to equestrian group unless you plan on putting horseshoes on your car.

Short answer. Do NOT risk your life or the lives of your passengers on unbranded cheap tires. Or by trying to interpret specifications where you are so obviously out of your league.

There is absolutely no rating of a tire that will tell you anything about the tire OTHER than the manufacturer's reputation concerning how honest that manufacturer is in rating their tires. NOTHING.

Case in point, find a single difference between the Firestone Exploding tires and a similar tire from Goodyear, Goodrich, Michelin, etc.

NO. All else being equal, the thicker the tread the more the tire will squirm and overheat at speed. NOTE that all else is NEVER equal.

Plys can be made of steel, nylon, rayon, aramid, etc. etc. All weigh different, and with the exception of rayon that doesn't do too well if the ply ever gets wet due to a cut, once you know the number of plies and what they are made of, you are still just as ignorant of the worth of that tire as you were before you knew this.

You can make a tire last a long time. So long the rubber will be pretty much completely oxidized before you ever see tread wear. OR you can make a tire with traction. Pick ONE. Some manufacturer's do a pretty good job of compromising between tread wear and traction, most don't and the smart ones rarely try.

None, unless the resulting tire track happens to spell a dirty word in Arabic or something. A blockier tread will be noisier, but again you can look at tread patterns all day and still be just as ignorant about that tire quality than you were before you started.

No. The heaviest component in a tire tends to be steel cord and tread belts.

Good quality sidewalls are good quality sidewalls and bad quality sidewalls are bad quality sidewalls. And that is about it. There is no single sidewall construction appropriate for all designs, vehicles, or driving patterns.

Sand decreases traction if on a dry road. You have heard nothing of truth.

Post your vehicle, whether you ever go offroad, and how fast you tend to drive plus your geographic location. Nothing beats a GOOD steel belted radial but only Pirelli and Michelin make those with the full wrapped tread belts. You can literally drive over a railroad spike with either tire, and even Consumer Reports has tested this. However, some of their models have more protection in the sidewall than others.

Or there are several other brands with consistently good, durable tires.

KWS proclaimed:

It isn't just a joke, it is a cruel joke on anyone who actually believes ISO has a single thing to do with actual product quality. All it means is that you have document revision control for the documents you CLAIM to use in your processes. It says absolutely nothing about whether those processes should best be written on toilet paper. And yes, I have been trained as an ISO Auditor.

larry moe 'n curly proclaimed:

If I recall correctly [and if not, am sure I'll be corrected], the tread wear rating is done by the manufacturer against their own designated "100 rating" tire. In other words, the ratings have not a lot of meaning within a brand and even less between brands from different source manufacturers--of which there really aren't that many left.

And Firestone is ISO 9000.

Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with the letter 'x')

Also, even if the process per se does not change, at least in the automotive industry, if location of a production line changes - whether from one room in a building to another room in the same building OR from a plant in the US to a plant in Mexico or vice-versa, the production line has to be certified all over again (in the automotive industry, that is called PPAP'ing - pronounced pee-pap - what in the "old days" was called "first article approval").

Yes - and even that is a joke in the U.S. auto industry. The process "requires" that a FMEA (Failure Modes and Effects Analysis - pronounced feemah - just like the federal agency for disaster relief) be done both for the assembly or component design *and* for the manufacturing process for same. A FMEA on the simplest part can take a team of various disciplines several man-weeks to complete - a very tedious process that sometimes requires those involved to lock themselves in a room or rent a hotel room for several days.

By its very definition, the paper work and numbers generated by the design FMEA had to feed into the beginning of the process FMEA. If you follow the book, it is, by definition, impossible to do the process FMEA (P-FMEA) without the design FMEA (D-FMEA) already in hand.

When I was in automotive, our first tier customer (the ones that imposed all this crap on us) were the designers. It was their responsibility to feed us the completed D-FMEA before we started the P-FMEA. But the way it really worked was that they would tell us that they did not have the resources to do the D-FMEA, but they were still going to require a P-MEA out of us - even though that was a philisophical, technical, and practical impossibility. When we protested, we were told that that's the way it had to be. It was clear that not to do it would mean we could not do business with them. Inevitable results: We had to fake the intitial input to start our P-FMEA (prime the pump so to speak), yet a meaningful and useful P-FMEA relies on the starting point being good information. Ever hear the expression "Garbage in, garbage out"? Well that was it by definition.

So there you have it. The faking of the entire quality system started with firm direction and winking from the customer themselves - the ones who required us to use the system. Any wonder the suppliers end up faking the rest of it when the faking was formally kicked off by the customer themselves? Any wonder the Firestone/Ford tire debacle happened, followed by the inevitable finger pointing?

Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with the letter 'x')

And both the 500 and the 721 predate ISO by a good 20 years.

AND - Many vehicles are under-tired from the factory so the tire doesn't stand a chance.

Of course, that is revalidating a previously validated process. (Not a function of ISO 9000 but of GMP - good manufacturing practice, at least in the pharmaceutical industry.)

DAS

For direct contact replace nospam with schmetterling

As an ordinary consumer I have no particular knowledge of the ratings you have mentioned. The rating of which I am aware is the speed, and I don't think manufacturers fit the incorrect type. Imagine the lawsuits if a tyre fails at 100 mph (rated at good for 110) when a car is rated to go at 120.

DAS

Yes, and a protectionist move by Europe against the US and Japan.

Yes, it is all about documentation and has nothing to do with the underlying quality of the products. I can develop a process that consistently produces bad product and still get ISO 9000 certification.

Matt