Tyres Question

Mason, 11 posts on the same subject saying largely the same thing in just over half an hour. Dude, that makes you almost as sad as Nom. (c;

Douglas

Yep, they certainly tend to. It's an obvious equation, softer rubber wears out quicker and grips better.

(And if that did happen, cheapskates would be buying them as well.)

Agreed.

Blimey, agreed twice in one packet.

Getting the back to break away is easy enough in the right sort of car, and it should be equally easy to get the back to line up again. Nothing to do with the tyres. A driver who blames the tyres for (a) putting down too much power for the tyres to handle, or (b) not being able to correct the resulting skid, is an accident waiting to happen.

I see this as a fault of the car.

The driver is lured into a belief that the car has a fancy computer that can drive better than ordinary humans and this is true. So they rely on it, which is fair enough as it is more reliable than they are.

Fast forward a bit. The only way the driver can discover the car has limits on what it can actually handle, is by exceeding these limits. The driver can have no way of knowing where these limits are, prior to that.

Pretty much by definition, the resulting loss of control by the superior driver aids will be far beyond what the (probably relatively inexperienced) driver can deal with and the resulting accident will be at a considerably higher speed than the driver would ever have reached, if the sophisticated driver aids hadn't been fitted in the first place.

I don't see it is all that relevant that the car should not be driven at the speeds it defeats the fancy aids, human nature being what it is, people will always push at the edge of the envelope from time to time. The clever part is making systems that do not instantly punish them for slightly overdoing it.

On a certain roundabout near me, yes. And no I wasn't travelling that fast either. In fact I reckon I traversed the roundabout slower than usual because when pulling away to exit, the back end pretty much always broke loose.

Nope. Even had it in a truck with a certain make of tyre on that had EBD/ABC/XYZ traction control on.

Hehe.

I like NangKangs (altho I'll readily admit they are comparatively crap in the wet).

They're owned by Yokohama...

My experience of cheap v. flash tyres is not so much that there need be a huge variation in the amount of grip available but that nifty[1] tyres handle transitions better and are more informative.

Good tyres will sharpen up turn in and will be less squirilly during direction changes and braking, they'll also let you know that they're thinking about it long before they actually let go. You get these benefits all the time, not just on the limit.

The problem is that you don't get to try the alternatives back to back... :(

Ludicrous prices for the tyres generally follows odd sizes. Ka tyres = dear, slightly different size tyres on volvo = cheap. Even some 18" tyres are a lot cheaper than others, even for the same model of tyre, because the size is more common.

Surprises me that 205/55/16 is so dear when it's common across mondeo / 3 series / Volvo.

Then I'll go so far as to say budget tyres will be just fine.

By "noname" and "budget", I mean things like Fulda, Falken, Hankook, Nankang, Kumho etc. - even I wouldn't touch Star Performer and TOP :)

I'm assuming they're 225/50R16 ? If so,

Why not ? If you can afford the car, then you can afford the rubber. The pair of rear Hankook's I just got fitted to the Pug, cost me £59 each. Hardly wallet stretching.

Er, so what would you do instead then ? My car's got 215/55/16 rubber as standard. Are you suggesting I should take off the stock rims, and stick some 14" jobbies on there ?

Then there's no wonder you have no money. I've got better things to spend mine on, than tyres.

Then your cars are broken. I've had no such problems in any of my ABS-equipped vehicles. Even if my stopping distances have increased, you're surely not suggesting it's anything more than 10% or so ?

So you're using s*it-rated high-profile teeny tyres then :) Are you sure they aren't 185/55/15 ?

Not in any of my cars !

I noticed that too :)

It's not sad - I'm being paid to make my posts :) Don't you notice that I only ever post between the hours of 8:30 and 5:00, weekdays ?

I love my job :D

in news: snipped-for-privacy@individual.net, "DanTXD" slurred :

This is true. Small animals get stuck in them :-)

I'd bet money that it's not in your job description. :-)

We've already covered this. You drive like a girl.

I wonder what his boss would have to say about that..... be quite easy to find out, all we'd have to do is forward some newsgroup stats to the right person.