Jupiter Tyres

No, that's being presumptious. He didn't say you didn't require a tread to shift water. He said the pattern of the tread is not important.

Well A008s have tread but you don't want to corner hard in the wet on them. Whilst marketing is almost certainly the main design issue it's not the sole one.

The message from gazzafield contains these words:

More likely the spacing and regularity. Anyone who's been overtaken by a LardRover with big cleated tyres will tell you what a racket they can make.

Are A008s marketed as wet weather tyres?

Having had s**te tyres on cars a couple of times, I wouldn't even have driven the car out of the carpark.

Actually I'd go along with some of what he said - cheaper tyres *can* outperform more expensive ones.

But having said that the Woosung Dark Horse tyres I had were easily the worst tyres I've ever had. And they were the first ones I'd ever noticed because they were so bad. I knew they had loads of tread but I had to keep checking.

Whereas the Vredestein Hi-Trac I've got now are excellent. I'd confidently stop with these in places the Dark Horses would have slid about as if they were on ice.

They were certainly the most dangerous I have ever had fitted to my Pug=20

Jim

Jim

Mytyres lists 26.50 as the cheapest possible, probably no worse, but fitting is on top - 6 quid at my local fitter per tyre. Bridgestones at 41.20

-- Democracy doesn't work - I didn't vote for Prescott yet he's still my MP.

That's one of the many reasons for putting new tyres on the rear, and moving the rears to the front, on front drive cars.

Also the space-saver tyres are formulated for long life.

Often amuses me that people will spend money on all sorts of bits for the car and insist on OE, but when it comes to consumables (pads / discs / tyres / dampers etc) they just go for cheap.

All that keeps your car from scraping along the road is the tyre.

The message from "Tim S Kemp" contains these words:

And the suspension, the wheelnuts, the wheel bearings, the mounting points on the chassis, the ability of the driver not to roll it.

I've had tyres I've liked and tyres I haven't but the only dangerous situation I ever had with tyres was a mismatched pair on the front of a Metro which made it pull so badly it was almost undriveable without arms like a blacksmith.

Unlike you, I'm amused by people who insist on having superb tyres and top-notch brakes and posh dampers but neglect to drive safely.

When that moment happens, and a cyclist flies out of a side road and you have to rely on the combination of cardboard brakes / concrete tyres / bouncy suspension to stop his helmet smashing your windscreen, you'll realise why it's important to have top notch tyres / brakes and dampers.

The same applies to the Firestone F700's on my current car - the newer one has more little slots in it (Sipes?) than the original fitment, although the tread is largely the same. I suspect its the carcass and the rubber compund that matter most, although tread must affect the water-shifting ability of the tyre in some way, especially as the tyre wears down.

Sometimes just fitting new tyres gives this kind of improvement over the worn-out ones that were removed.

The message from "Tim S Kemp" contains these words:

But you can play that game forever. You also rely on attention, good driving technique, luck, driving a suitable car and many other things. Most tyres are adequate - as are most brakes apart from the fraudulently rubbishy copies. People place different emphasis on different things - they're all important.

For amusement, one could look at your respective crash records. Which one of you drives with a greater safety margin?

clive

If you're doing 50mph and a cyclist appears from the path you'll be using your tyres to the limit regardless.

If that limit is significantly lower, you lose. As does the cyclist.

Or as do you, under a truck.

Seems worth a bit extra to get decent tyres to me.

Tyre tests have shown there can be significant differences in stopping distances - the ultimate stopping power of the car lies in the contact between tyre and road, secondarily the ability for the brakes to dissipate heat. The combination of a quality tyre (my chosen favourite is the Conti Premium and Sport contact), good discs and pads (always gone OE except on the Volvo where OEs were not good for multiple 120+ to 0 stops, it got Brembo / Ferodo) and well maintained suspension is the difference between an "whoops" and an "ouch" moment.

And they do happen, not often, but the time I was driving back across germany and a loose /horse/ on the autobahn (I have a feeling it was a horsebox that separated from its towcar) caused the traffic to halt, with me stopping about 6 inches from the back of the mercedes in front of me, and the car behind sliding past me having escaped to the shoulder shows that the choices are right.

That and the very interesting experience on the M6 of a stationary car in lane 3 - I missed it, the two cars behind me did not.

How much do you know about risk compensation? Mr Kemp is on the side of top notch kit. Mr King is on the side of sufficiently good kit. One of them has a significantly poor crash record. Who is it?

clive