Thought I'd start a thread about this.

We all care about our loved ones but how often do you check your tyres and how much attention do you pay to what you buy? When I bought my car (a 406 1.9 Turbo Diesel) I was told that the woman who previously owned it had 3 small children. If so then why did she have 4 obscurely branded, incorrectly inflated and only just legal tyres on her car?

A month or so ago I put some brand new shiny Michelin Pilot Primacy's on the front (couldn't afford to do all four at once) and the car is sooooo much better to drive, soooo much safer AND it's more fuel efficient than before (only by a bit but it all counts doesn't it?).

If you shop around you'll find you can buy some proper well known brand tyres such as Michelin's, Pirelli's or Continentals for less than your local tyre place would cost to rip you off for some obscure Eastern European tyres.  So would you risk the safety of your loved ones just for the false economy of saving 40 quid or so on a set of tyres?

I know that I'm definitely not willing to do this and I'll continue to pay more for tyres and get more out of them!

Costco has a very good brand and with balancing etc price is very competitive. I think anyone can join and there's a double figure annual fee.

ty4that:Costco has a very good brand and with balancing etc price is very competitive. I think anyone can join and there's a double figure annual fee.

 What brands of tyres do they supply? You'll find most cheap tyre deals are just selling you rubbish tyres :-(

Well for me, I always shop for tyres online and I always use a certain website. The good thing with shopping online is that every individual tyre has got reviews for them by other people who have used them. This helps me in deciding which brand to go for. Sometimes though, premium brands are not as good as other brands. Till date I have not bought any bad tyres; touch wood, and the prices are very competitive as well.

Cutchie:Well for me, I always shop for tyres online and I always use a certain website. The good thing with shopping online is that every individual tyre has got reviews for them by other people who have used them. This helps me in deciding which brand to go for. Sometimes though, premium brands are not as good as other brands. Till date I have not bought any bad tyres; touch wood, and the prices are very competitive as well.

 Of course sometimes the premium tyres are possibly not as good in some ways as other brands but if you buy Michelin, Pirelli, Continental and so on you will never get a bad tyre. Most people won't recognise a bad tyre though because you'll be going from a worn tyre to a brand new one and there will be an instant increase in grip and all most people expect from a tyre is for it to keep their rims from scraping on the ground and making lots of sparks.

Hahahaha..that's very true indeed. Few people actually pay attention to their tyres with regards to thread depth and pressure. Funny thing is tyres are the only things that keep a car on a road; and people take them for granted :)

 Exactly. I admit I don't check my tyres as much as I should in regards to tread depth I'm always checking :-) Just bear in mind it's false economy to buy a cheap tyre that lasts as long as a more expensive one but gives you bad fuel economy. It's even worse economy to buy a tyre which doesn't give you enough grip and you have a crash and die :-)

I have Michelin tyres on the front and Pirelli on the back.

What tyres do I use?  Expensive ones!!

But with the kids at stake; I can't do anything else, really.

Cat

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Costco. No it's a top quality brand (forgotten which one) plus great service plus great returns policy. That's what Costco's all about but you don't get choice. That's part of the reason prices are so good.

It's all well and good having expensive tyres, but i guess the next question becomes how often do you check your tyre pressure and thread depth??

 Regards

Woof

:)
 

I check mine visually every time I get in, then once a week with a tyre pressure gauge, also tread depth gauge gets used every three months, I use pirelli P7000 at the moment, but always stick with well known branded tyres after reading independant reviews.

The site below does good deals on tyres and has road test results of each tyre, rating every function a tyre needs to perform. I scrub the front tyres on my car in about 10k miles so I have to get good prices.

There are a lot of cheap import tyres from the likes of China and Malaysia at the moment, I would not want them on my high performance car, but on a runabout car they seem okay, one in particular is a "Nankang" brand.

 

http://www.mytyres.

co.uk/start.html

Ah yes I remember so well a W123 Merc that I had not in the first flush of youth. Tyres were wearing really well on the outside until one day I caught sight of the inside - barely legal and too late to be saved by 'tracking'.

I check mine by looking every time I get in, too, and the pressure about every two/three weeks.  But I do have an alarm which tells me if the pressure drops too low - hasn't happened yet.

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Cutchie:

It's all well and good having expensive tyres, but i guess the next question becomes how often do you check your tyre pressure and thread depth??

 Regards

Woof

:)
 

I check my tread death almost daily. It's just me. I was walking through the carpark at work the other day and spotted a Porsche Boxter with tyres that were just above legal and got to the point of almost emailing the person but didn't because it would have looked a bit strange :-P

Pressures I don't check as often as I should but if you buy good tyres the pressures should be more constant than with lesser tyres. A friend of mine works for Continental and says that tyres are a lot less airtight than you'd think and one of the things they really work on is making a tyre better at holding air.

conmankiller:

I check mine visually every time I get in, then once a week with a tyre pressure gauge, also tread depth gauge gets used every three months, I use pirelli P7000 at the moment, but always stick with well known branded tyres after reading independant reviews.

The site below does good deals on tyres and has road test results of each tyre, rating every function a tyre needs to perform. I scrub the front tyres on my car in about 10k miles so I have to get good prices.

There are a lot of cheap import tyres from the likes of China and Malaysia at the moment, I would not want them on a high performance car, but on a runabout car they seem okay, one in particular is a Nankang brand.

 

http://www.mytyres.

co.uk/start.html

 Nankang are popular in Australia. When I bought my Peugeot 504 in Australia it had Cheng Shin tyres on it and even though it's the most high performance car (in fact it was slow!) it was a lot better with Michelin's on it. Quieter, more fuel efficient, better in the wet, better under brakes and better in the corners :-)