Are Cheao Tyres still "ditchfinders" or just marketing?

d215yq

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So after having done the tie bars now got a puncture and so need 2x new tyres (they need to match to pass an MOT here). So looking through it seems the cheapest Michelin (70€)/Goodyears (60€) etc have E.E. rating (E for wet weather and E for fuel consupmtion) same rating as the cheapest Chinese tyres (30€). But there are some unheard of Cheap tyres boasting C.C. rating for (40€). So in other words how can they be ditchfinders when their wet grip (most important as I've never slid a car in the dry) is better than some of the premium brands offerings?

Seems to me these EU tests have really shown all the premium tyre companies up as marketing/scaremongering. I know they say the cheap tyres don't last but my old ones (Kingstar, not recognised brand made in China) have done 70k and still have 4mm left - only replacing 2 of the 4 due to this puncture.

In the end I've gone for Falkens which offers the best price for good ratings (45€ and a A for fuel economy and B for wet grip) and the same or lower noise than the others. Does anyone else trust/use these official ratings because all the tyre fitters etc seem to ask what brand or what price you want but never what minimum rating you want, etc. I just want to pay the least for reasonable fuel consumption and reasonable wet weather performance and don't care what the name says...
 

LostKiwi

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Yes the cheap tyres are still ditch finders. The ratings on tyres are provided by the manufacturer so to a certain extent can be 'optimistic'.
I'm quite happy to rely on the ratings to a certain extent but will never go for the cheapest on the market preferring mid range tyres (and in particular Uniroyal).
In the past I've used Toyo, Falken , Avon as well as Goodyear, Dunlop and Pireilli and have found little between them with perhaps Dunlop edging the top of the board for grip, economy and wear but at a premium. To me the best compromise has been Uniroyal Rainsport 3 but it doesn't always play well with a different brand on the other axle.
 

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Usually budget tyres are shocking in the wet,
Michelins have been the most economical fitments.
 

Rappey69

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The road noise cheap Chinese tyres can make is horrendous...
They get their tyres E marked so suitable for use in the EU, but no one monitors it so the build quality gets worse and worse until you end up with a EU legal tyre that is well shy of the mark !
 

grahamcol

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I once put some real cheapo Kwik S_it tyres on the rear of my first 202. Didn't last very long at all. Never again! That said, I don't rate some of the so called premium tyres very much, Conti for example. I've been using Kumho for a few years now and find them very good. There again, I don't drive my cars to the limit.
 

John Laidlaw

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Mostly it’s the ‘rubber’ compounds they use.....in many cases that’s not controlled tightly enough and can contain undesirable elements ( such as what’s swept up of the floor and chucked in the hopper!)
So theoretically the rubber will behave to circumstances as it’s designed to but if it’s not what they think it should be then of course it won’t and may be completely unpredictable
Like any rubber component just more critical as that’s what’s keeping you on the road ( and out of ditches)
 

keefysher

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Mostly it’s the ‘rubber’ compounds they use.....in many cases that’s not controlled tightly enough and can contain undesirable elements ( such as what’s swept up of the floor and chucked in the hopper!)
So theoretically the rubber will behave to circumstances as it’s designed to but if it’s not what they think it should be then of course it won’t and may be completely unpredictable
Like any rubber component just more critical as that’s what’s keeping you on the road ( and out of ditches)

You old cynic :alien: It's all in the mastication ;);) or black magic.
 
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d215yq

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  • Thread Starter
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Thanks for the responses. I'm surprised the quality control on something as critical as tyres is as lax as the above posts state. Any industry insiders who know this for a fact? Given the obsessive regulation for many other things which cause a few deaths a year and the amount that die in crashes it seems weird manufcaturers test their own tyres/can just be lax about their build quality without a random test/lawsuit/etc?

It's intersting though in 10 years/180k miles of driving W124s on mainly cheapest tyres but sometimes branded mid range when there's a good offer I've never lost grip other than in snow or once when I hit some diesel. That's without traction control and last 4 years without ABS too. Never got less than 60k out of a set either and won't change them until they're very close to the limit.

Will put my flameproof suit on and say that it's probably safer having a car on the worst type of tyres that are never tested to the limit than with the best ones which are driven in a way that their limit is found. I know there's the whole emergency stop thing but even that can be planned for with sensible driving/reading the roads. I think I've done 1 emergency stop in 180k miles of driving.
 

A.J.

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Usually budget tyres are shocking in the wet,
Michelins have been the most economical fitments.
I worked for many, many years in Vehicle Contract Hire industry and the company I worked for always insisted that any new car purchased would be shod with Michelin for that very reason ! :)
 

Craiglxviii

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Answer- yes, although not as awful as they once were. They all have to meet certain minimum requirements to legally be sold. But that’s like driving a car with a 1 Star eNCAP. It’s legal...
 

MalcQV

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I have had a mixture of budget, medium budget and expensive :p budget tyres on various cars. I also will use part worn expensive tyres. In fact I have just bought two Continental tyres with about 6mm for my CLK.

The most extraordinary things I've found were...
Budget tyres that came with after market (look-a-like) RS6 wheels for a Passat I had several years ago. That year in Oldham where my girlfriend lived the snow was deep and pretty bad for weeks. That car was incredibly good and never got stuck.

That car was replaced by a Rover for a short time. The car I then bought with Goodyear F1's (an Alfa GT) was awful on them. i also got stranded in lesser Oldham snow on two occasions. I think they might have been a dodgy batch but they wore out quickly and were hopeless in the wet. I replaced them with Falkens which were superb.

Maybe I did get a bad batch with the Goodyears but I won't touch F1's again.
 

Rappey69

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Thanks for the responses. I'm surprised the quality control on something as critical as tyres is as lax as the above posts state. Any industry insiders who know this for a fact?

Cant say for a fact, but can tell you why I suggested that.
I have a solid axle road legal quad, so its very important both rear tyres are exactly the same rolling diameter..
The E mark means the tyres meet the size, speed, load etc..
I bought a pair of kings tyres, both had the same batch number so made at the same time..
Was not until they were fitted and I went out for a ride I knew something was terribly wrong.
Measured the diameter and one tyre was 1 1/4" bigger than the other !
Now this was a scenario that was happening more often than not on the quad forums..
I complained to the DoT at the time. their reply was they were not the country responsible for issuing that particular E mark so powerless to do anything about it??
It was Holland who issued the E mark for those tyres so sent many emails to their issuing authority but no matter what I tried I just got ignored so gave up...
So at the point of the initial testing I would assume the tyres met with the criteria, but like lots of other chinse production, the quality deteriorates over time and it seems no one is interested in checking.
Chinese tyre build quality seems ok, but sizing does not..
The only problem I had with very cheap tyres on the road on my car was the very loud road noise.. Looked into that and it seems if you have a symmetrical tyre pattern drawing a line through the tyre centre then you have lots of noise..
Have a offset tread pattern and the tyres roll a lot quieter!
 

KennyN

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We fitted a set of budget Landsail tyres to the wifes Juke around a year ago , no issues with grip / noise / wear.

I had Evergreens on the front of the CLS for four years , again with no issues.

Kenny
 

Ricardo_e220

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I got more miles from a set of nexen tyres on my s211 than a set of Michelin’s... 40k vs 32k or so... the michelines were more than double the cost of course...

There are some awful cheap tyres and some tyres which good but priced cheaper...
 

Westheath

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Personally for our vans
Id rather be on Michelin's in the wet than Nexen's :)

Everything else Mercedes is on Pirelli P Zeros
 

Mr Filipov

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I once put some real cheapo Kwik S_it tyres on the rear of my first 202. Didn't last very long at all. Never again! That said, I don't rate some of the so called premium tyres very much, Conti for example. I've been using Kumho for a few years now and find them very good. There again, I don't drive my cars to the limit.

What don’t you rate on the Contis?
 

Craiglxviii

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We fitted a set of budget Landsail tyres to the wifes Juke around a year ago , no issues with grip / noise / wear.

I had Evergreens on the front of the CLS for four years , again with no issues.

Kenny
That’s only because the NVH effect due to radiated tyre noise in a Juke is so bad, you wouldn’t notice if it went up by 5dB or so. That’s not an exaggeration btw.
 

Craiglxviii

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I got more miles from a set of nexen tyres on my s211 than a set of Michelin’s... 40k vs 32k or so... the michelines were more than double the cost of course...

There are some awful cheap tyres and some tyres which good but priced cheaper...
There’s more to tyres than service life. Grip and noise come into it quite a lot too!!
 

Frontstep

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I have to question the ditch finder tag for cheaper tyres as I go past an awful lot of them on my travels and only see cars in them that have been driven badly usually at speed !

Still more seriously there must somewhere be data on road accidents and tyres

I have Michelin Primacys fitted but have to accept that other makes may well be superior and as we all know price is not necessarily an indicator of value or quality.
We rarely get fully independent tyre reviews as many are hosted by the manufacturer and asking a purchaser who has nothing to compare with doesn't make much sense.

The same car on the correct pressures and set up tested with a range of tyres would be useful.
 


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