Tire Speed Rating

Just another Sams Club idiot salesman, you wont void any warranty. Michelin does not make junk that blows out like other manufacturers.

====================== Speed rating is a European standard which primarily measures heat accumulation. People will tell you to maintain the original speed rating for the "better" constructoin of the tire which they will tell you translates into better handling and safety at lower speeds also. Personally, I've never had a problem with "S" rated tires on the Camry even at much higher speeds - and the tires always seem just warm to the touch after long highway driving. For the cost of a mouse click, you may want to investigate Yokohama tires also:

of the people reviewing their purchase on Tire Rack preferred themto Michelin for ride quality and low noise as well as handling and longtread wear. The Yokohama is a well respected brand by those familiarwith them and represents excellent value at about half the cost of the"X" tire which could be considered one of Michelin's older designs atthis point.

You'll find that handling suffers too with lower rated tires both in side wall flexing (which builds up heat) and in traction. Don't you think the factory would put on cheaper lower rated tires if it was safe and they saved a buck? Stick with the OEM rating --- tire are what keep you safely ON the road. Many tire store will NOT sell you the tires for fear they would be held liable when they blow.

Since the OP says his Michelin-X tires have been great, I think it's safe to assume handling is not one of his priorities. Wet road traction apparently isn't important to him either.

Any tire store should push back at a customer request to use a lower speed rating than is listed for their car. However, with the same load rating, the S-rated tires should be fine on a Camry that was delivered with T-rated tires.

If you go over to an Acura group you'll see lots of similar discussions re. using H-rated tires instead of V-rated tires on the Acura TL. Most TL customers replace their tires with H rated and are happy. (Folks with manual transmission TLs, a fairly small %, should probably stick with the higher performance Vs.)

You might also have a look at Goodyears of the same size. As my Michelins wore down on my '97 Camry, I replaced them (two at a time over a period of a year or so) with Goodyears, and have been more than pleased with their performance. They're quiet, they seem to wear better than the Michelins, and have never been troublesom in any way. They also seem to retain air a bit better than the Michelins used to de.

The Michelin X Radials were the number two rated tires by Consumer Reports in Nov 2005, losing by one point to the Goodyear Assurance TripleTred. X was rated very good or excellent on all important attributes except ice braking without abs (a pathological case these days) and emergency handling (on which they were rated "good").

I bought a set of Xs a few months ago for my 99 Camry, and I think they're fine tires.

A small addendum here. I had a look at my Goodyears and they are the "Weatherhandler LS" model, if you're interested.

Apparently, the folks who submit tire surveys to The Tire Rack do not share your enthusiasm for these mediocre tires, rated 8th and MUCH lower performing than the top rated TripleTreds in the "passenger all season" (lowest performance) category.

Goodyear Assurance TripleTred 1 Michelin HydroEdge 2 Goodyear Assurance ComforTred 3 Michelin Harmony 4 Yokohama Aegis LS4 5 Firestone Affinity LH30 6 Yokohama S330 7 Michelin Energy LX4 8

Next time try something like the Pirelli P Zero Nero M&S or the Michelin Pilot Exalto A/S and see if you can't feel the difference.

The Tire Rack gets their information from users who have millions of miles worth of observations. Not a limited suite of track tests like CR.

CR should stick to rating washing machines.

Given that the tire rack users are random consumers who have not compared tires back to back, and that CR employs degreed engineers who test the tires in a controlled fashion, I know which source I trust.

Tire Rack customers are not exactly random. Think about folks who actually go out of their way to buy a particular tire and have it shipped to them. You'd have figured this out for yourself if you read some of the user comments.

CR engineers, as good as they may be, do not have the opportunity to put millions of test miles on sets of tires mounted on a wide variety of cars. No does CR test as wide array of tires as do Tire Rack buyers. Furthermore, Tire Rack tests many of their tires under controlled conditions and publishes these results on their web site. Some of their tests are conducted by professional drivers whose on-track observations are made available.

So how do the lap times of the Michelin Energy LX compare with the Goodyear Assurance TripleTreds?

CR has a philosophy of trying to be completely objective, which means they assign numerical scores to everything, and products are rated on the composite score achieved of all the various tests. The consumer may not weigh each of the factors the same as CR did in compiling the scores, and therefore the CR recommendations can be useless, or worse. Further, the CR tests are done in a short amount of time, and they don't live the products to the same extent that consumers or other experts do. And their "engineers" are generic in nature and test hundreds of different products and are not specialists in any one area.

CR is OK is they are the only ones you can find to test a product, and if you read their rating criteria carefully to discover their own biases. But a specialty magazine who uses test personnel who are specialists in the field are much more likely to give you better overall advice. The consumer reviews in Tire Track cannot always be trusted, but if there are enough different customer reviews then the likelihood of error is significantly reduced.

I often rely on customer reviews in Amazon.com for many purchases, even if I never buy the product from them. Some of the customer.reviews on Amazon are contradictory, but it is useful to hear all sides and try to make a determination of which persons know what they are talking about. Doing this takes more time than simply blindly following the CR recommendations, but is more fruitful in the long run.

The scores are broken down in the most detailed fashion possible, with ratings for Dry Braking, Dry Cornering, Dry Emergency Handling, Wet Braking w/ABS, Wet Cornering, Hydroplaning, Winter snow traction, Ice braking without ABS, Steering feel, Impact, Noise, Rolling resistance, and a couple of others. Do tire rack users rate the tires along all these dimensions? Do the tire rack users measure these things numerically (say, with a sound dB meter or a measuring tape) where possible?

Further, the CR

Au contraire, the people answering the questions in the forums are vehicle engineers, one with a masters degree. I assume they are also the people doing the tests.

Yeah, they're biased toward the tire that stops in the shortest distance on their test track. I must admit I'm biased that way too.

You mean, the reviews put there by the manufacturers' employees and the sheep who followed them to validate their belief in their own purchase?

Here's a test they did and I selected at random

the link for "graphs" to get their measurements. MEASUREMENTSnot ratings. Lots more tests if you care to read them.

vehicle engineers or just recent ME grads?

and how many cars do they test with the same tire? and they test under varied road and environmental conditions? and their test drivers are all as skilled as the idiot who rolled that Oldsmobile? (OK, that was cheap shot, as it happened years ago. But still, they rolled an Oldsmobile, how lame can you get?)

There must be a lot of employees putting in a lot of hours to post all those reviews; some of which are not especially complementary.

The survey results are pretty accurate for any tire with over 500,000 miles worth of reported use.

Kinda funny hearing a CR subscriber calling anyone else "sheep." Nearly every CR subscriber I've come across is very defensive of CR and takes exception to any suggestion that CR may not be the last word in accuracy. Talk about sheep!

It doesn't matter that much, to me at least. I would trust the tire rack a lot more if, to obtain posting privileges, one had to correctly answer a couple of questions like:

Define the term "coefficient of static friction". What physical mechanisms contribute to rolling resistance?

It all boils down to whether you have greater trust in the scientific method or the wisdom of the uneducated rabble. At the moment, the rabble in the US seems to be driving a lot of heavy, tippy, lethal SUVs. This speaks volumes about their level of education in basic physics and vehicle dynamics.

I stopped thinking that CR was the gospel about 50 years ago, when they picked a Hudson over a Chrysler Windsor, saying the Hudson's frame was more rigid, and the Windsor's frame was a little "torquey". All very well, but even as a barely conscious (of automotive matters) college student, I knew that if you bought a Hudson, it would be forever, since the trade in value of a Hudson was close to zero, whereas the Chrysler maintained its value.

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