Warm deal on Z-rated tires

[Zap]

I needed new tires for my 1998 Ford Contour SVT. The original tires were Goodyear Eagle GS-C 205/55ZR16. Yup, nice, expensive Z-rated Goodyears. Not wanting to spend over $200 PER TIRE, I went shopping for alternatives. I decided I wouldn't mind paying a lot less for a lower rated tire, like V or even H. The only important thing was to get the right size.

I ended up getting tires from Winston Tires. They quoted me $73.99 per tire (plus tax and $8 balancing) on Uniroyal GTV4 tires in that size. These are V-rated M+S (all season) with 25,000 mile tread (average for performance tires), temperature A, traction A, treadware 300 (compared to 240 on the Goodyears).

I actually had needed one really bad because I had a blowout coming home from a strip club in Yuma (long story, hehe) and they happened to have one in stock, so I got it. After it was installed (on 10/9/00), they charged me what they quoted for the GTV4. Then, I took a look at what they put on my car. They had put a Uniroyal GTZ4 205/55ZR16. Yup, a Z-rated tire.

I had asked them to order 3 more tires since I was pretty much down to the wear bars, and they got the tire in on Friday 10/13/00. Took in my car the next day, and they installed and charged me for "GTV4" tires, but once again, I got GTZ4 tires.

For anyone that has ever shopped for Z-rated tires, you know that this is a good deal. $73.99 for a Z-rated tire at Winston Tires.

 

[dman]

Keep in mind:

Almost all tire shops will negotiate prices. Use this to your advantage and watch the add's for a low price and then go to another place and see if they can do better. Don't forget to cost in mounting and balancing. Road Hazzard too (if you are a gambler).

That said, the best prices I've found (non-mail-order / large company ) on tires w/ road hazzard and mounting/balancing come from Costco's. I'm sure SAMS Club (if they sell tires?) has similar deals. Check 'em out.

Just for comparison, Mounting, LIFETIME balancing, rotating(when necessary) AND roadhazzard was about $7.00 per tire at Costco. At other shops nearby the cost was between 14-21 per tire for those three items. I tried pricematching at other shops and, generally, they wouldn't touch the costco's prices.

Drawbacks: Costco's only does tires, so, anything else like brakes, alignment, etc, you gotta go elsewhere (or yourself if you are so inclined). That could be a postive if you don't like getting sold on extra's at other tire shops.

Also, Costco's can order tires if they don't have the size/type you like in stock. However, they have a limited selection of brands (as do most shops) so your favorite tire might not be sold there.

 

[hkchan]

Great tips but do-it-yourself alignment?

 

[cmv]

Pirelli makes really good tires that are pretty inexpensive too. tirerack.com is good for this (along with rims, etc).

 

[flot]

For tires, I've found it is hard (if not impossible) to beat Tire Rack (www.tirerack.com) on price. My only complaint about them is that they will try to push Dunlop tires on you - don't know if they just get an incredible comission on them or if they really are that good. However, price and service from them are both outstanding, and it's rare to hear me say that about any vendor.

But regardless... I hate to hear people being cheap about tires. ($75 a tire sounds reasonable, don't get me wrong..) but like the $39.95 tire deals????? Yeesh. Wouldn't want a $40 tire being the only thing between me and the pavement going past at 90 mph.

FYI - best performance tires I've found - Bridgestone Potenza S-02s. But they're not cheap, at about $200 apiece. (that's mail order - local stores want $350-$375)

 

[Souka]

Heck...$19.99+tax you get lifetime rotation and balance at LesSchwab....plus good magazines, newspapers, and snacks if you wait while it's done.

 

[dscline]

I've ordered my last two sets of tires from Tirerack. They have good prices & service, and you can't beet them as a resource for all the testing & consumer feedback. I must conceed, however, that there is some value in a local vendor. The first set I bought from them were Pirelli P7000 SS. One of them was kinda bad from the start.... I had them mounted by my car dealership, and they had a very bad time balancing it. They suggested tyring them for a while, saying sometimes they do ok, but sometimes they get worse. Mine got MUCH worse, and another one developed a bulge in the side. At slow speeds, the car would actually bounce up & down about an inch, because the tires were so much out of round. They also got EXTREMELY noisy as the tread wore down. If I had gotten them through a local dealership, I would have taken them back in a heartbeat, but it was just too much hassle for mailorder, due to the mounting issue. I ended up throwing them away before the useful treadlife was up.

That being said, I still went back to Tirerack for my second set (though I will probably never get Pirellis again). Couldn't resist the great bargain... tirerack is a member of the ECS sites (brandsforless, etc.), so I got them with the 20% rebate deal (which I still haven't recieved, btw). Asuming I get the rebate, it makes these tires DIRT CHEAP! Even without the rebate, Tirerack has great prices if you don't mind doing tires mailorder. BTW, this time I bought the Dunlop SP5000. They have EXCELLENT noise & ride quality compared to the Pirellis, but I do think they are a notch down in responsiveness. In all fairness though, The P7000s were tops in this area. I used them to replace the high performance summer only Dunlop 8000s that came on my car, and I couldn't detect any difference in performance in that switch. That's saying quite a bit, since there is usually a big performance compromise in all season tires (which both the P7000 and SP5000 are). The SP5000 also have EXCELLENT wet traction, and they are expected to have much better snow performance than the Pirellis (which didn't rate well in snow).

 

[Vette73]

I am a ASE Mechanic that has done tires. There is very little difference in Tire companies( Minus the whole Firestone thing ) When you go to get a tire look at the price and the Treadware rating on the side of the tire. A mid-performance tire should be 300-380 range, Performance tire from 000-280, and 420-or higher is a standard road tire.
So far the Generals at Sam's are the best deal, I got my 14inch tires for $38 each and that is with a 520 treadware. So always shop around and get the highest Treadware, unless you need the extra performance which most don't ( Unless you have a Vette )

 

[RoadRuner]

pep boys tires the ultra-z's were rated in one of those car mags are equal to in quality or better than the gatorbacks. Cheap stuff .like $99 for 16 inch tires.

since the stang eats them up, cheap sticky tires are a necessity

 

[Angrymarshmello]

Sams usually has good prices on tires (parents bought last 2 sets of 4 tires there) and if you own a Discover card, you occasionally get a $15 off coupon on $50 or more. (Ya ya its not that much but thats like 120 Snickers worth of candy, yummy )

 

[Zap]

I checked out http://www.tirerack.com and the cheapest they had were Yokohama AVS for $2 less per tire than the Uniroyal I got. Not cheaper enough for me to buy mailorder. Plus, I don't think I would want to get tires mailorder since then I'd have to find some place to install them, and as dscline told us, if there's a problem... With a local place, I can always take it back for balancing/rotation/problems, and Winston Tires is a chain store, so more locations in case I'm elsewhere.

I did try out Costco, but they didn't have my size. Also, they didn't have ANY information for that size, both brand/model and pricing. They said that they can check for me, but since I was on hold a total of about 20 minutes, I didn't want to be holding my breath for any information from them. The guy also said that special order tires generally took about 10 days to arrive.

In regards to both mail-order and special-ordering at Costco... I needed a tire badly since I had a blowout. No tire=no car=no commute=no work=no $$$.

Besides the cost of the tire plus tax, I had to pay $8 for installation/balancing. I declined the roadhazard, since I've gotten it before, and never had to use it.

I decided on the cheaper tires for the money savings. I mostly commute, and don't go outta my way looking for curvy roads (everything is flat and straight around here) so I don't need the absolute best performance. However, I feel comfortable knowing I have _some_ performance capabilities. I could be wrong, but I feel that if a tire manufacturer went out of its way to put a Z (V, H, whatever) rating on a particular tire, it just has to be able to meet some sort of minimum performance requirements.



<< since the stang eats them up, cheap sticky tires are a necessity >>


Yeah, LOL. I had a 1986 Mustang GT before the Contour. I went as low as H rated tires on it. They performed reasonable and I would get about 40k miles on them. Cheap, too.

The money I saved is going towards paying off my credit cards. Who would'a thought that having a Celeron 533=>800 and twin Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 30GB RAID0 =>60GB wasn't enough... Now I'm running P3 700=>933 and DiamondMax Plus 45GB ATA100 RAID0 => 90GB (on an Abit BX133-RAID). I'm broke. There goes my strip club money for this year.

 

[spec411]

strip clubs?? this is off topic but does your strip club offer &quot;special services&quot; and whats the going rate??


back to the original post: $70~ for z rated 16s is a HOT DEAL!! hell its tough to get h rated 16s much cheaper than that! Like the mechanic said, anything except the BARGAIN BASEMENT tires are good these days..tire tech has improved SO MUCH in the last 20-30 years, i always used to remember getting flats in my familys cars now that is so rare...

 

[BigDaveZuck]

Fuhegadaboutit...25000 for a performance tire is a fugazi. Don't get me wrong, the price you got is a definite score. But a GOOD perforamce tire should last you a lot longer than that. Before my Prelude was stolen, my Toyo Proxes FZ4 were wearing really well after about 35000 miles; I probably still had like another 15-20000 miles left on 'em. On a good performance tire, you should be able to get at least a 300 treadwear rating or so. Unless you go for an all-out performance tire, in which case the tread wears like $hit. For comparison though, the treadwear on a Pirelli P-Zero (the ultimate in OE street tires) should wear at least 20000 or so, and the Nitto NT555Rs (the ultimate in traction) should last at least 15000.

You scored getting Z-rated tires that cheap, but remeber this: not all Z-rated tires are the same. The Z rating is indicative of the maximum allowable speed of the tire, not the overall performace of the tire.

 

[huesmann]

BigDaveZuck, your tires on your Prelude must have been hard as rocks to last that long. Sticky (soft) tires usually don't last that long, more like 25-30k at best. Especially R-compound tires.

 

[mamisano]

Hey ZAP,
I too have a Contour SVT. Ever go to Contour.org?

I purchased BFG KDW's 215/50/16's for my E1. They are going for about $90 on Tirerack. Cheap if you ask me for a kickA$$ tire.

Later

 

[flot]

Agreed re: performance tires not lasting long. I haven't gotten more than 12,000 miles out of rears or 15,000 out of fronts. (yes I really drop $800 a year on tires, why do you think I need hot deals???)

As far as I know, the speed rating of a tire only indicates that it is &quot;safe&quot; to drive at that speed for some set period of time. I believe that most of this rating is related to its heat transfer characteristics, not actual performance. I have had Michelins, Yokohamas, and Bridgestones. The Yokohami AVS-Is were probably the best bang for the buck, but the Potenza S-02s are outstanding all around.

On topic - dscline -- what's that about a 20% discount??? That would make tire rack an incredible deal! Please elaborate...

 

[dscline]

Marlin1975, I might be wrong on this, but I had read that there is no universal, federally regulated guideline on treadware ratings. My understanding is that because of this, you can really only use treadware ratings to compare tires from the same company (this could all be wrong though). And although there is a correlation between tire wear &amp; performance (stickier compounds tend to be softer, and wear faster), I don't think you can make a blanket statement that a high performance is going to fall between xxx-xxx, etc. Theres a lot more to the performance of a tire than the softness of the compound. Not all high performance tires wear like erasers, and not all &quot;standard&quot; tires last 50k miles. I also think there is a difference in tire companies (although many people don't realize how many companies are related, and how many build tires for other companies). When I had all the problems with my Pirellis, I learned that many people had these problems. I also learned that they seemed to be issues that were more prevelant in the ones made in a plant here in the US, vs. Pirellis that are made in Europe.

Flot, there have been several deals over the past several months, many posted by Nitz, for the ECS sites (brandsforless, geoportals, yellowbrix, etc.). These portals often times offer 20% off offers (although lately they have been excluding computers4sure). For information on these deals, check here: http://www.neumannfamily.org/ecs/ The currently don't have the 20% off deal, but it might reappear. In the past, brandsforless has been good about getting rebates to me, but I haven't received any in the last several months (including this tire deal). Not sure if this is a bad sign, or if they're just behind.

By the time I took tirerack's price of $95 for my 205/55/16 SP5000's, took 20% off of that, ~$35 for freight, paid $80 to have them installed, it compared quite well to the $550 installed I was quoted locally. From what I've seen, tirerack compares much better job on high performance (high $$) tires. Local shops seem to charge more of a premium for performance tires than Tirerack, and the freight/installation cost constant really hurts lower priced tires from mailorder. A co-worker was looking for some basic tires the same time I was. Even with the 20% off, she wasn't really any better off with Tirerack. If you pay $40 for a tire, and build in the cost of installation, there's not much left for tire cost from tirerack.

 

[bigbootydaddy]

yeah, pretty nice, my tires are vrated michys and go for 190 a pop, on a civic si, ouch it hurt when one popped, also on a late night escapade

 

[Zap]

<< I too have a Contour SVT. Ever go to Contour.org? >>


Cool! Never been there, but it's bookmarked now.


<< 215/50/16 >>


How well does that fit? Does it end up the same outer circumference? Or do newer Contour SVTs (assuming yours is 1999 or 2000) use that size? My owners manual says that I can't even use chains because the tire is already wide enough that there wouldn't be clearance for the suspension components.


<< strip clubs?? this is off topic but does your strip club offer &quot;special services&quot; and whats the going rate?? >>


I'm not a &quot;regular&quot; at any strip club. I've been to three different ones within the last year. There are no &quot;special services&quot; (assuming you mean &quot;extras&quot; that you have to wear a raincoat for) to be found in Southern California or Arizona You may want to try Market Street Cinema in San Francisco or go to the &quot;block&quot; in Baltimore, MD (Baltimore Street, home to the longest lived red light district in the United States).

If anyone's curious about how mild (most of the time) a strip club can be, click here: I see nekkid people (a bastardization of Sixth Sense &quot;I see dead people&quot

 

[spec411]

Personally Ive never paid more than $150 for a set of tires installed, including 16inchers, vrated, Vogues, what have you (but Ive either got them at store clearances or I get barely used ones when people replace a whole set b/c just 1 or 2 were bad - i dont mind having 2 diff brands since theyre all blackwall anyways) just always gotta remember to keep the same 2 on front and back!


yeah that leaves more $$ for the strip clubs!! =) hehehhe... but i agree strip clubs are pretty tame here, ever try Le Girls in SD? your like 20 feet from the dancers by the time they take everythign off...Tijuana has some action but a lot of the girls there are straight up nasty...im headin to the Philippines soon, there and Thailand got it goin on....

 

[ebaker]

Sam's has a big list of tires they can special order if you prepay and wait 2-3 days. Ordering from some place similar to TireRack and then getting them mounted/lifetime balanced at WalMart is a good way to go too, if you don't mind hauling around tires.
Sometimes Z rated tires perform worse than V rated. If the tread compound is equal the Z rated tire's extra stiff sidewall may give slightly less cornering force, harsher ride, and more tendency to follow grooves in the road.
Also as a general rule long tread life tires have poor wet traction. Soft rubber is needed to stick in the wet.

 

[Ronstang]

You cannot, I repeat cannot compare treadwear ratings between different brands of tires!!!! A 300 rating by Dunlop might be a 400 by Pirelli. They are only of use when looking at different tires of the same manufacturer. If you don't believe me go to a reputable tire store and ask them.

 

[ETLA]

What if you have 18&quot; low profile tires?? LIke I just spend $350 for 2 Nitto NT555 cuz I got 18s and it's low profile Z rated...so EXPEN$IVE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!HELP?

 

[broadwayblue]

ok...my tires have apparently achieved close to &quot;failure point&quot; according to my mechanic. I have begun my research and was looking for clarification on some of the numbers related to tires.

the original tires my 1991 Accord came with are 195/60-15. I assume the 15 refers to the size of the tire. what do the other numbers mean? thanks for any help.

 

[Healey]

BTW If you do decide to buy tires at Winston Tires be sure to go HERE and get a coupon for free oil changes for life. Up to four per year. You only have to buy two tires to get the deal. I think I'll get the two fronts done soon, and then the rears done later and pick up eight oil changes per year.

Oil changes around here (SoCal) run about $15 so that deal will be worth about $120 per year, for life.