Standard Subaru tires

What kind of tires are the Subarus typically come with? I mean brands and all-season?

Reply to
cameo
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I don't know that there is a 'typical' tire that spans all of the Subaru range given the size variations. My 2018 Outback has "Bridgestone Dueler, H/P 255/60R18, 100H M+S". From past experience I would have preferred Continental but not enough to replace them.

Reply to
John McGaw

I meant the tires that are mounted at the factory. Personally I prefer Michelin tires. Most other brands are made in China and with that kind of quality.

Reply to
cameo

I'm sure that John was talking about factory tires, since he has a 2018 Subie. I think my 2013 Outback also came with Bridgestones. I had to replace them at 30,000 miles and got Michelins. As John noted, there may not be a single brand that comes on all Subie model lines. I'd lay a bet that all the SUV/wagon/crossover models come with M+S tires. I'm equally sure that you won't find any factory-installed Michelins.

Patty

Reply to
Patty Winter

Yes, and No.

My 1988 Subaru GL 4x4 wagon came with Bridgestones. They weren't very good. One winter of them not behaving well in wet coastal BC and WA state snow (not the toughest test in the world) made me switch to Michelins, which I had been using on previously owned Chevrolets since about 1968. The Michelins (all-weather) lasted about twice as long and were at least twice as good in snow and on poor mountain pseudo-roads, as the original Bridgestones. I decided that, unlike with my previous Chevrolets, I did not need snow tires.

My 1997 Outback came with Michelins! I was overjoyed. So, in the past, sometimes Subarus came with Michelins. I kept that car for 307,000 km before giving it to one of my daughters, and during that time it went through 2.5 sets of Michelin all-weather tires. (The third set was about half-used when I gave her the car in 2007.) They worked fine, including a February trip back via Idaho and Washington from eastern BC to the Vancouver area (to avoid a 5800 ft high pass on BC 3). When I got out of the car in northern Idaho to fill up on cheaper US gas, I slipped and fell. The car had been driving beautifully ignoring the slipperiness that careless walking did not tolerate.

My 2007 Outback came with Bridgestones. Because of a strike I was not able immediately to replace them with Michelins, as I otherwise would have done. Instead I replaced them with Goodyears, rated at Tirerack nearly as good as the Michelins I would have bought, had I been able to. The Goodyears were not that good. A year and a half later I replaced them with Michelins. Those Michelins lasted about 120,000 km. I just bought their replacements on sale at Costco. They still had adequate tread, but I was concerned about their sidewalls because of their age. I don't drive as many km per year as I used to.

BC has changed things a bit. It used to be that if you had decent all weather tires on an AWD vehicle and stayed out of trouble, all was well. Not so now. Go outside the Greater Vancouver area, or even within it up the roads leading to two ski hills, without snow tires (all weather tires aren't considered snow tires) and you get in trouble if the RCMP stops your car to check. So last November, again at a Costco sale, I bought my first set of Michelin winter tires since the mid-1980s. They're in the basement awaiting needless re-installation next winter. They too worked fine in what snow we had this past winter. They're rated for about half as much tread mileage as the all-weather tires. They're also a bit noisier than the all-weather tires.

There are some conditions when good all-weather tires just aren't good enough on an AWD car. But I haven't driven in them yet, and, given such conditions, if I had the choice I'd stay home, even with the Michelin X-ice tires!

Reply to
David Ryeburn

I know. That's why I used the present tense in my answer.

David, are you talking about studded tires? Here in California, the only state requirement (under certain road conditions) is M+S tires. Not all tires marketed as "all-season" are M+S, right?

I keep chains in my car in case I ever have to go past a CHP checkpoint, but truth be told, if conditions ever got to the point where I would be required to put them on (what's called R-3 in California), I would turn around and go home! I think the CHP and Caltrans actually rarely call R-3; they usually just close the road when things get that bad.

Patty

Reply to
Patty Winter

No. They're not required here, and are prohibited for much of the year. I used to use studded Michelin snow tires in winter in BC when I drove a Chevelle wagon or a Cavalier wagon, but the trouble with that was that they had to come off one month earlier in WA state than in BC or in OR state. So to drive south to Oregon and California at that time of year without vaulting over the top of WA state you had to remove the things before leaving home. I remember one interesting April trip through Siskiyou Pass on I-5 with summer Michelins on my 1971 Chevelle wagon. It did have a limited slip differential on the rear end, which did a little bit of good.

Yes. Here's what the government says:

While M+S tires with 3.5 mm tread is the minimum requirement for winter driving in B.C. it is highly recommended that you use mountain snowflake tires and carry chains while driving high mountain passes like the Coquihalla and the Malahat or anywhere that severe winter conditions are likely to occur.

It seems to me that any tires that can get you safely up, and, more importantly, back down snow-covered logging roads (where the RCMP will not be inspecting your car) should be more than good enough for provincial highways. But what seems to be the case to me and what the law requires can be two different things.

I see you've been a Mac user and a radio amateur. I was W8EZE 1949-1967, unlicensed 1967-2013, and VE7EZM and AF7BZ 2013-now. My first Mac was purchased in 1988 and my first Subaru in 1989.

David

Reply to
David Ryeburn

The snowflake-on-the-mountain symbol is pretty. :-)

I started doing work for Apple in 1979, so I got a Mac very early on. :-) As for amateur radio, I haven't done anything lately, but in 2016, I was very active in National Parks on the Air, and I was one of many hams who were using Subarus for mobile or portable operation. Here's a photo of mine next to the Merced River in Yosemite, near El Capitan:

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Patty

Reply to
Patty Winter

OK, I'll restate: at the factory my new 2018 Outback was equipped with "Bridgestone Dueler, H/P 255/60R18, 100H M+S".

Reply to
John McGaw

I wonder how the dealer would react if I demanded my new car come with Michelin tires. Would they replace the original factory tires with them, for a fee, of course?

Reply to
cameo

Yes, of course they would -- they are a money-making entity and they invariably sell tires and have arrangements with local tire distributors so that they can get virtually any tire you might want. Have no doubt that they would make maximum profit doing what you demand and would do it ten times a day as long as you kept paying and in the end they'd sell the "scrap" OEM tires to somebody else.

Reply to
John McGaw

Well, I would not want to pay for brand new tires, just for the price difference between the factory version and my choice, plus for the labor for the swap.

Reply to
cameo

Per John's reply, Bridgestone tires are manufactured in the USA and elsewhere.

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INCLUDING China:

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Michelin has production facilities in China, too. Aw, too bad your lamblast backfired.

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Whether China, Japan, or elsewhere, quality is dictated by whomever defines the specifications which the manufacturer must meet. The same plant can produce low-, medium-, or high-quality products depending on what the "maker" specified.

You're buying Subarus but don't want tires from China. (rolls eyes) Geez, get over the prejudice.

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That lists some tire brands and their country of origin. That is NOT the same as where are their manufacturing plants or whomever they contract to product that brand's tires. If your bias prevents you from buying tires from a company who has manufacture plants in China (as well as elsewhere), then you waste your time doing the further research on plant locations.

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That lists the OEM tire brands and sizes for the Legacy. You didn't bother to mention a model. Yokohama is Japanese but they also have plants in the USA.

Reply to
VanguardLH

Just HOW is the dealer going to *get* the car without tires (so they put on only your choice and not end up having to "dispose" of the originals)? Cars are not delivered atop pallets with no tires installed. Did you call your nearby dealers?

Reply to
VanguardLH

I once encountered someone who said that my Porsche 944 wasn't a real Porsche because it was made at an Audi factory instead of at the main Porsche plant in Zuffenhausen. He didn't care that the car had been designed by Porsche and manufactured to their specifications. Talk about a snob!

Patty

Reply to
Patty Winter

That's like saying a Beretta handgun assembled at a plant in the USA isn't a true Beretta. At first, the handguns were only milled and assembled in Italy. Sorry, I don't know the country of origin for the non-milled parts (return spring, wood or plastic handle grips, screws, sight paint, stamped metal magazine). Then they started shipping parts to a USA plant for assembly there. Geez, parts made in Italy but assembled in the USA aren't true Berettas. Uh huh.

I see the same snobbery about car brands but the snobs never bother to do the research to see where are all the assembly plants for a brand. Besides, a large portion of the parts for a car are made elsewhere and the car plant just assembles the parts into a product. Is the brand location where the car got *assembled* or where all the parts were made that went into that assembly? What about where all the components that were used to build the parts? Where was the refinery that made the sheet rolls that went into making the car body? Where was the ore mined? Car manufacture is a world-wide business.

I remember a long time ago when I found out Teac and Radio Shack used the same co-production facility. Their products were assembled at the same plant. In fact, Radio Shack had tighter specs than Teac resulting in a pooh-pooh'ed brand being a better product than the name-brand. I found out when I disassembled the Radio Shack tape deck and found Teac branded parts inside and then did some research (although the Internet existed back then, the Web did not which is only a part of the Internet).

Reply to
VanguardLH

Time Magazine has a web page where you can look up the percentage of U.S. vs. foreign parts in various car models, plus where they're assembled:

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Yeah, these days it's just a matter of percentage of how "American" a car is. It's silly for people to get huffy or self-righteous about it.

Bless you for knowing that. :-) I remember when people thought that the Internet was AOL. Now they think it's the World Wide Web.

Patty

Reply to
Patty Winter

Talk about experience. I used to work at Boeing which ordered a lot of components for the 787 model from other companies. Those parts also had exact specs from Boeing engineers, yet many of them had to be reworked at the Boeing plant causing all kinds of delays initially with the new

787 model. Another example is my old '94 Honda Accord assembeled in Japan. My mechanic told me he could always tell when an Accord was assembled in the US or Japan without looking at the VIN. The Japanese assembled cars were just better put together. I'm sure the US Honda factory was also not supplied completely by the same part vendors as the Japanese assembled ones even though they probably used the same specs. So there...
Reply to
cameo

You can ask the dealerships, but I'm pretty sure they'll tell you whatever brand of tires that they are affiliated with at the time. Each dealer has its own affiliated brands it seems.

Yousuf Khan

Reply to
Yousuf Khan

The tires come on the cars from the factory. It's not something the dealer puts on. So It is about the factory's affiliation with the tire manufacturer then, not the dealer's, even though the dealer may replace those tires for some customers if it is so inclined.

Reply to
cameo

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