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Do my tires matter

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i bought some kumho solus kr21's for my truck a couple years ago. $75 a pop and they were excellent tires. they wore pretty fast, i think i have 40k miles on them and theyre pretty much to the wear strips... but they were good for the money. great traction, especially in rain and snow. soft tires with a performance tread. not really a truck tire but they worked great on my ranger.

looking for something new though as i dont think they make these anymore or the places i go just dont carry them. i think when you buy budget tires, its really just a lottery pick. some tires will be made from good batches of rubber and if youre lucky enough to get a set then you just got a good bargain.
 
ShawnD1 said:
Different polymers have different rates of change. An all season tire might be made from a set of polymers that stay fairly consistent hardness from -30C to +30C and never really gets soft at any temperature, even after spinning them on dry pavement. A summer tire could be made from a material that is strongly affected by temperature.


Some polymers have strange behaviors. At one job I had, we were selling a certain polymer dissolved in water. In a fridge, it's a thick syrup. When it gets to room temperature, it thickens to the consistency of jello. Polymers like that are also in motor oil. As oil temperature rises, polymers thicken the oil so it doesn't get too thin.
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So why don't they make summer tires that don't harden excessively at 40F? That would let you run them year round in places like Texas.
 
Throckmorton said:
So why don't they make summer tires that don't harden excessively at 40F? That would let you run them year round in places like Texas.
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i think its pretty amazing what they have done with tires to get them to perform as well as they already do. the amount of abuse they take is off the charts, and yet they prove to be very reliable. i know we all complain when tires dont last 60k miles with no flats, but if you put it into perspective on what they actually do its pretty hard to complain.
 
Did we find out where OP is from? I live in DFW, and have just put the cheapies on my Focus, haven't had a lick of trouble with them. I ditched the stock Hankook LRR tires, as they were a death hazard in even a little bit of rain on the roads around here. Since then have had a couple of pairs of various cheap stuff, and it's been great. The 2000 Focus has probably only a few whp over 100 at max, and is a very lightweight vehicle, I'd say it's more important to maintain proper tire pressure and tire rotation than to waste extra $$ on fancier tires.

Heavier vehicles, more powerful vehicles, and drivers that constantly have to deal with inclement weather are the ones that should consider more premium tires.
 
I live in Baltimore. We get snow a few times per year, but by the time I'm on the road it's usually plowed.
 
ichy said:
I live in Baltimore. We get snow a few times per year, but by the time I'm on the road it's usually plowed.
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Get the DWS then.

I live in N.VA and the DWS work great year round for me.

EDIT
If your car has 15" wheel you can;t get the DWS. Here are some that don;t cost to much but should work well...
http://www.tirerack.com/tires/tires.jsp?tireMake=General&tireModel=Altimax+HP

I put those on my MiLs car and they seem to work well.


These are also highly rated but cheap as well...
http://www.tirerack.com/tires/tires.jsp?tireMake=Hankook&tireModel=Optimo+H727
 
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jlee said:
I didn't think people down south swapped tires for winter.. 😕
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Yeah, because most people use all seasons, and the few who run summer tires just deal with the reduced traction in winter. Neither the summer tires or all seasons really fit a huge swath of the country... or hell, the world.
 
zerocool84 said:
It sucks, I just wish I had more tire options though. It sucks having a weird tire size.

bfg_gforceta_kdw2_ci2_l.jpg
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Use whatever random tire/rim size you want. Just make sure the random size tires have a smaller outside diameter, that way your speedo says you are going faster than you really are and you will be less likely to get speeding tickets.



So why don't they make summer tires that don't harden excessively at 40F? That would let you run them year round in places like Texas.
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Assuming it's actually possible, it's probably cost related. If it doubles the price of the tire, you might as well just have 2 sets of tires.
 
ShawnD1 said:
Use whatever random tire/rim size you want. Just make sure the random size tires have a smaller outside diameter, that way your speedo says you are going faster than you really are and you will be less likely to get speeding tickets.
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The diameter differences with a car are miniscule. It's trucks where it matters-- I have 31" tires on my Jeep that had 28" stock. The odometer is off by 10%, but even then the speedometer is only off by about 5% because stock speedos read high to begin with. You don't need smaller tires on your car than stock-- that looks ridiculous.


Assuming it's actually possible, it's probably cost related. If it doubles the price of the tire, you might as well just have 2 sets of tires.
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Just make the allseasons softer, so that they're just as soft in summer. In the winter they'll be softer than regular all seasons and still work.
 
ShawnD1 said:
Use whatever random tire/rim size you want. Just make sure the random size tires have a smaller outside diameter, that way your speedo says you are going faster than you really are and you will be less likely to get speeding tickets.
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Nope can't. I don't really want to get into it with you because anything anyone says is going to be opposite of what you say.
 
zerocool84 said:
Nope can't. I don't really want to get into it with you because anything anyone says is going to be opposite of what you say.
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In that other thread (can't remember which one) I said my winter tires+rims are exactly the same size as the stock all season tires+rims and people are flipping out and saying that using the same tire size is wrong. Presumably using a different tire size is the correct answer.

Why is your car not capable of doing this?
 
Throckmorton said:
Why can't you use different sized tires? On most vehicles there's enough clearance to run a slightly wider and taller tire
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I was thinking smaller so you wouldn't need to deal with clearance 😉

Maybe he lowered his car and using smaller tires would make it scrape the bottom against speed bumps. Some of the speed bumps in newer shopping malls are so high that even my completely unmodified Civic would scrape the ground.
 
jlee said:
I didn't think people down south swapped tires for winter.. 😕
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I did, but then again, I'm only in DFW for a year or so.
Paid off big time when I could drive around without problems during snowpacalypse in early Feb (DFW was dead quiet - there were literally like 10 cars on the road at any given time).
ShawnD1 said:
In that other thread (can't remember which one) I said my winter tires+rims are exactly the same size as the stock all season tires+rims and people are flipping out and saying that using the same tire size is wrong. Presumably using a different tire size is the correct answer.
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Well, you can use the same sized tire, but a narrower one would not float around on snow as much, eg. my stocks are 235/50/R17, snows are 215/55/R17 - great size because the speedo's only off by ~0.5%.
 
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Throckmorton said:
Why can't you use different sized tires? On most vehicles there's enough clearance to run a slightly wider and taller tire
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My car has lowered spring perches from the factory so I can only run a certain size tire on my stock wheels or else they'll rub. If I want to get larger wheels I have to get a specific size with a specific offset that are expensive as well so they won't rub either and get super thin tires. My stock size is 225/45-16 which no one carries in stock and only like 3 tire manufacturers make that size. It's just something I have to deal with for wanting a car that was made for auto-x out of the factory. Of course I could just swap out the suspension but it'd defeat the purpose of me spending more money on the car to get the handling benefits from the factory that my car came with.
 
WhoBeDaPlaya said:
I did, but then again, I'm only in DFW for a year or so.
Paid off big time when I could drive around without problems during snowpacalypse in early Feb (DFW was dead quiet - there were literally like 10 cars on the road at any given time).

Well, you can use the same sized tire, but a narrower one would not float around on snow as much, eg. my stocks are 235/50/R17, snows are 215/55/R17 - great size because the speedo's only off by ~0.5%.
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Hahaha, I'm in DFW too, and was driving around with my dirt cheap bottom-line tires. My Focus is super light though, and I drove carefully. Was funny passing stranded SUVs and the like 😛
 
Arkaign said:
Hahaha, I'm in DFW too, and was driving around with my dirt cheap bottom-line tires. My Focus is super light though, and I drove carefully. Was funny passing stranded SUVs and the like 😛
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The LS isn't the best RWD handler on ice/snow and needs the extra help. But yeah, there were a TON of stranded trucks / SUVs spinning and smoking their tires 😛
 
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