Rear tyres on FWD car

parking_question_chap

Hi

How important is rear tyre choice on a front wheel drive car?

I need some 205/55 16 tyres and currently looking at Rainsport 3s for £62 each fitted. Im not after a debate about Uniroyal/Dunlop/Goodyear etc. I have been very happy with the Rainsport 2s but they now sell the 3 version.

All I want to know is could I get away with cheaper? Car is only worth £1500 so I dont need them to be amazing.

Ebe_Scrooge

Whether a car is FWD or RWD has pretty much no bearing on tyre choice - the oft-quoted mantra that "the tyres are the only contact the car has with the road" holds true.


In fact, there is an argument that rear tyres are even more important than fronts. If the front tyres lose grip then you get understeer, which most drivers can make a reasonably good effort at correcting. If the back ones go then you get oversteer, which is much more difficult to cope with unless you've had specific skid correction training.

Marktheshark

Depends how you drive, if yin are on the red line of danger then you will need the best money can buy, but will come unstuck one day, they all do eventually.

Iceweasel

I agree 100% with Ebe & Mark.

And I fail to understand what the value of the car has to do with anything regarding the tyres.

bod1467

Unless he's going rallying, or has a similar driving style, pretty much anything but ditch finders will be fine.

IamNotAllowedToUseMyName

Yep, I'd go with driving style. If you drive well within the limits of the car, as long as you are buying reasonable quality tyres (not remoulds or super budget junk) then you are not going to be challenging them and you will find little difference. ABS will avoid anything too nasty going on in an emergency where the majority of braking effort will be on the front wheels anyway, so generally the rear wheels will simply be stopping the rear bumper scraping on the ground.

If you hammer around, then all the tyres are important.

On an older car you can consider going to a lower speed rating - tyres are often fitted based on the maximum new performance of the car and of course used in the UK you get nowhere near the sustained speeds that the tyres are rated for. Assuming you are not going abroad you can fit lower spec. tyres as you simply will not be any where near the performance limits of the tyre.

caprikid1

I think ultimately tyres make a huge difference to handling control and stopping distance.


Having driven the same cars with different tyres the transformation can be remarkable.


If an extra foot on stopping distance is not important to you or when you realise the bend is tighter than expected your happy in the hedge then go budget.


BTW, I drive a Blue Ford Capri Laser, stay away if you buy budget.

Iceweasel

People who have never experienced the grip that premium tyres give, have absolutely no comprehension of the degree of extra safety they give.

Too many folks seen to think that 'high performance' tyres are for cars and drivers with a - shall we say 'flamboyant' driving style.

The nonsensical implication being that if one has grippy tyres then one is going to drive outrageously fast and take crazy risks.

Hopefully I will never need the extra grip for emergency braking or to take avoiding action - but even if I only make use of the higher grip threshold only once in the lifetime of the tyres then they will have saved me unwanted expense and possibly my life and the lives of others.

I am very wary in the wet as I see from a glance around any supermarket car-park what some folks fit on the grounds of not needing anything amazing as the OP put it.

Stay safe - don't economise on tyres.

Cue all those who will tell us they have driven for countless thousands of miles/years with the cheapest of tyres and have had no problems

---

yet!

IamNotAllowedToUseMyName

caprikid1 wrote: »

I think ultimately tyres make a huge difference to handling control and stopping distance.


Having driven the same cars with different tyres the transformation can be remarkable.


If an extra foot on stopping distance is not important to you or when you realise the bend is tighter than expected your happy in the hedge then go budget.


BTW, I drive a Blue Ford Capri Laser, stay away if you buy budget.

I don't disagree on rear wheel drive cars and have posted before how all season tyres transformed the unmanageable road holding of a 1999 C Class Merc, but I've also driven a Golf with stability control and medium quality tyres in spirited fashion and the handling was predictable to the point of boring, even with rear tyre lifting round corners, zero wear on the rear tyres over several years and 30,000 miles tells you those tyres are doing nothing but holding the car up.

So the reality is on the typical FWD runabout rear tyres simply do not have to do much work.

The other aspect to consider in comparing tyres is on the rear you can fit something where they are considered to have poorer wear because they will not get worn down like the fronts which are doing 90% of the work.

Marktheshark

Iceweasel wrote: »

Cue all those who will tell us they have driven for countless thousands of miles/years with the cheapest of tyres and have had no problems

---

yet!

Hmm 38 Years x 25,000 average, more in the old days, less now = Just short of a Million Miles.
On "Ditch finders", that yet never managed to find that ditch.

Might have to ask for a refund ?

Most cars I do pass in ditches, appear to be high performance type cars that have been driven too fast.

stator

If you have front disc brakes and rear drum brakes then the rear tyres don't matter as much as the front. As long as they are new they will be safe.
The fuel economy rating will tell you how much rolling resistence there is, a higher fuel economy usually comes at the expense of wet stopping distance rating.
Personally I make sure I have good braking tyres on the front and would only go for the highest wet braking rating available. On the rear take your choice.