Talk to me about tyres please

Iceweasel

Exactly which Continental tyres have you got at the moment?

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What size?

Why change the type that you have at the moment - do you want more performance/grip or better economy?

Remember that all tyres are a compromise?

getmore4less

I would have left the 3mm on the front and run them for a bit longer replacing hen the weather turns, and swap back to fron then.

That way you are replacing pairs at regular intervals arathe than 4 at once.

Leaving them on the back can lead to very old tyres on some cars that have extreamly low wear.

If doing high mileage a set of winters may be an option leave the 3mm till you swap to winters and get new ones for the swap back to summer

Beed space to store and be resonably happy to swap over yourself when not getting new ones or in for a service.

jase1

While it is true that oversteer is a more serious condition than understeer for most drivers, that is mostly counterbalanced by the fact that the front tyres are doing much more work than the rears and therefore you need to be pushing the car some to coax oversteer out of it in the first place.

Temporarily moving the 3mm tyres to the rear to put off the need to replace them is entirely reasonable.

Oh, and there's nothing wrong whatsoever in mixing tyres front-to-back -- and cheaper rubber is fine as long as you stick to recognisable brands.

Stigy

Ebe_Scrooge wrote: »

It's not nonsense. Having the duff tyres on the back wont guarantee to cause oversteer just by themselves. But if the front tyres lose grip ( whether due to rain, or ice, or a blowout, or whatever ) you'll get understeer. If the back tyres lose grip you'll get oversteer.


So it makes sense to have the best tyres on the back to reduce the possibility of them losing grip. Most drivers can make a decent attempt at correcting understeer, but oversteer is much more difficult to deal with.

On a FWD car such as this, I'd always have the better tyres on the front. Common sense surely? Why is there the need to swap in the first place? Because they wear quicker on the front. The front of the car is where the steering happens, where the power is applied and where the majority of the weight is. Most FWD cars naturally understeer because of this. Yes you might have more back end stability at high speed but this is far outweighed by the need for low-end grip for steering traction. Having low tread on the front will only serve to increase understeer.

ChumLee

Stigy wrote: »

On a FWD car such as this, I'd always have the better tyres on the front. Common sense surely? Why is there the need to swap in the first place? Because they wear quicker on the front. The front of the car is where the steering happens, where the power is applied and where the majority of the weight is. Most FWD cars naturally understeer because of this. Yes you might have more back end stability at high speed but this is far outweighed by the need for low-end grip for steering traction. Having low tread on the front will only serve to increase understeer.

Common sense is to listen to the tyre manufactures and put them on the rear.

Stigy

ChumLee wrote: »

Common sense is to listen to the tyre manufactures and put them on the rear.

I've looked this up and it seems the general consensus is to have better tyres on the rear. This never used to be the advice, for the reasons I've mentioned in my last post. I appreciate that on faster roads in the wet the need for more rear end traction. Under normal driving conditions, front end traction on FWD cars is obviously better. In cases such as this where the lower tread is on 3mm, this isn't obviously the same as being on the 1.6mm limit, or even below, therefore having the 6mm ones on the front I'd say is better.

BeenThroughItAll

Stigy wrote: »

This never used to be the advice

It's been the advice I've heard at least since I bought my first car tyres in 1993...

Stigy

BeenThroughItAll wrote: »

It's been the advice I've heard at least since I bought my first car tyres in 1993...

Really? I left the motor trade in about 2002 and we certainly weren't advising this then.

BeenThroughItAll

Stigy wrote: »

Really? I left the motor trade in about 2002 and we certainly weren't advising this then.

Just goes to show how much mis-information is given out in the motor-trade that, doesn't it? The local tyre place I used to visit back then was very keen to point out that new tyres on the front of my Escort was against advice, despite my protestations to the contrary. They showed me a well-worn leaflet from Pirelli which gave the 'good tyres to the rear' advice. I have followed it ever since.


On a side note, I remember a colleague of mine over 15 years ago deliberately fitting more worn/less grippy tyres onto the back of his amateur racing car, in order to provoke oversteer which he considered more useful on track.

molerat

I have been asked several times in the last few years why I wanted the new tyres on the rear so the advice is still not making its way to the trade.