Tire help/advice please...

[Perry Mason]

I thought I would update this thread once more...

It's now about 5000 km later... just returned from a 5 day trip to the Berkshires, about 1500 km... drove there and back at a steady 130 km/hr...

These tires are just super good! Great traction, quiet, very nimble and responsive, no vibrations of any kind, absorb small bumps, work well with the suspension.

I would recommend.

Perry

 

[dajodo2]

What you might want to try to help is filling your tires with nitrogen, usually $5 a tire. Most good dealers offer the service or will shortly. The nitrogen doesn't react with the rubber, is a larger molecule so it doesn't leak through as easily and isn't as effected by temperature changes. I've had it for a while and don't remember the last time I had to top off my tires from a leak or extreme temperatures.

I agree.

Got tires installed on one of my cars just before Christmas at Costco where they fill 'em with nitrogen.

Have checked 'em periodically since and the psi hasn't dropped one bit in almost 10 months now.

 

[Hard Idle]

Michelin's were quoted at about $275 + tax per tire including installation, tire disposal, etc.

I paid just over $600 for the Falkens, all in.

Perry

LMFAO. $275 per tire. There is no production car tire in any size that even remotely justifies such a price. You are simply helping to pick up the tab of all that high-profile advertising and sports team sponsorships.

BTW my relative has the same tire on his Honda, and has just had to replace one after 16 months and only 18000 kms of light dury driving (mostly 40kmh crawls through Leaside side streets).

Ultimately you did the right thing. It is better to buy a much less expensive but performance oriented tire and change them out much sooner instead of trying to stretch out expensive tires to recover some value.

Do keep an eye on the wet traction with the Falkens. The patern of anecdotes in car forums about the old 512's was that guys were blown away when they first put them on, but in by the end of a full year of driving the wet grip would degrade considerably although the tread and rubber still looked good. (Note, I'm NOT talking about hydroplaning resistance here, just the rubber's adhesion on wet surfaces during stops or accelarating.)

 

[Hard Idle]

Ultimately, I figured that a few automotive engineers at Honda went through this same exercise of choosing tires... so, since I like what they did with the car design, I will defer to their choice of tires.

You probably assumed WRONG here. I doubt the engineers were consulted at all except for the tire's basic rating requirements.

With mass production cars, 90% of the time the contracts for outsourced components come down to purely business and financial considerations.

With "invisible" items such as wires, filters & hoses, there is usually only one criteria: the lowest bid.

Because tires are more high profile, the company must narrow it down to brands which are household names that are known and acceptable to their target customer. But from there, the final decision will still come down to business considerations.

Rather than consult desgniers, car companies often make them work around marketing agendas. For example the Gen 3 Nissan Altima in '02, the base model came with a new, odd tire size for the 4cyl model so that the OEM supplier (Continental) would initially have a monoply on replacement tires until some other tire producers decided to make the new size just for one car.

To further ensure there were plenty of repalcement tire sales and dealership visits, the pressure recomendation on the Altima's doorjamb was an absurd 29psi (not that Contis need any help to be unreliable...).

 

[OddSox]

Price is important, but performance is much more so. I do mostly city and parking lot driving... meaning 401/404/DVP, etc.
Perry

Um, why would performance matter? Its not like you're going to the track...