Sam said:
Problem is mate , i dont evan know if i can trust these "big tests" and its hardly like theres one every month
I trust my mates and can generally tell if something is worth a bang or not. As i said most people ive spoken too have raved about the wet performance !
The only way i feel i can find out about a tyre is actually buying them and trying them
Expensive but u will soon find out how good they are
Sam
I'm not saying the way I pick tyres is right, but here is my reasoning behind it..
User reviews on tyres are, IMHO, largely useless becuase very few people will constantly try most tyres. It's not like a car where you can go and test drive it, etc etc. You'll buy tyres perhaps once every 2 years (or less if you are lead footed but its hardly a weekly thing). That means you have ONE chance to make the right choice and unless you are made of money, you live with your choice for several years. So, generally, people who rave about their tyres have nothing really to compare them to.
I think my Eagle F1's are great - they grip, etc etc, they are brilliant. Do I personally know how they compare to Michelin Pilot Sports? No, I have absolutely no idea. I've never tried Pilot Sports and even if I had, if I'd never had a situation whereby my tyres were on the absolute limit, how would I know if the PS's were better or worse than the F1's for that one occasion when I round a corner in the wet to find something on the road and suddenly need all the stopping power I can get?
Next is that tyre performance will degrade over time - which is why it is recommended you change tyres at about 3mm of tread. So, obviously, a new tyre is generally speaking better than an old tyre and thats before we take into account other differences. It's maybe fair to say that wet performance of a brand new 'average' tyre will be better than that of a virtually illegal Eagle F1. So you could then fit average tyres and 'OMG! ITS NOTICEABLY BETTER!'. Well yes, of course it is.
Then you've got human nature - we always like to think we didn't buy a dog. We like to think we bought the right thing. So, if you spend £450 on a certain tyre, you'll be trying to convince yourself that yea, you did good. Damn, these tyres rock, etc etc. Visit the graphics card forum for more examples of this form of human nature
So if you can't rely on others to recommend a tyre based on their experience, how CAN you decide?
Well, it is very tricky - buying tyres is one of the most difficult things you can do for your car (But not many people realise this) simply becuase it can be so difficult to know which to chose from. Infrequently, perhaps once a year, respected publications like Evo and Autocar will perform PROPER tyre tests. What I mean by proper tyre tests is defined tests under lab conditions. Not a bloke who takes the car out for a razz and says 'Yea this is great' as they would in, say, a road test of a new car.
We'll take the last Autocar test for example. They gathered the 6 leading high performance tyres, mounted them on the same make/model of 18" alloy wheel, the same size, and in turn, took them around a dedicated tyre testing facility on a performance car. They measured aquaplaning, wet braking, dry braking, wet and dry cornering speed, etc etc. Basically, everything you'd subject a tyre to with the notable exception of wear rate (Which IS where user opinions come in useful, becuase only users can tell you how long they'll last!).
This then allowed you to see *exactly* how the tyres perform, and exactly how much grip was offered, etc etc.
The test showed that Goodyear Eagle F1 GS-D3 won, and Bridgestone Potenza S-03 was second - although it is worth noting that the only reason the F1 beat the Potenza was higher points score in the drive-by-noise test, and given none of us care about how noisy our cars are for people outside of them, you can ignore this test, which would have resulted in a tie.
Thats how I chose my tyres, and hopefully, I've explained why thats how I chose my tyres. The day the F1 is toppled by a superior tyre in all respects in one of these proper tests will be the day when my next set of tyres isn't a set of Eagle F1's. Don't buy Eagle F1's or S-03's becuase guys on a forum say 'lol they pwn', buy them becuase proper tests show 'they pwn'.
Oh, one other thing worth noting about F1's is that they come in two forms - regular and 'Extra Load'. Now, the 530d has 225/55/16 regular GS-D3, and my Mondeo has 205/50/16 'XL' ones with a noticeably smaller sidewall than the 530d. Although grip etc etc was far, far increased by fitting F1's to the 530d (With the previous Conti's the DSC light was on... frequently!), it has reduced some of the 'feel' - yet on the lower profile versions, its absolutely fine... So if you've got huge balloon like tyres its worth considering - the technical performance is still there, but feel is very much subjective. Although the test in question does cover this - it's the only part of the test where the F1 didn't either storm everything or come close to the top - the Potenza S-03 was regarded as the best for feel/dry handling..
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