going to open a tin of worms here

[248cmr]

oh i do like a decent discussion !!!!!
Well, i have had another good look at Tyres on the car, and they have about 2-3mm left before they hit the wear bumps, so few thousand to go.
I was speaking to a chap i know the other day, he had just bought a very nice BMW X5, and the dealer he bought it from fitted four new tyres. I was surprised to see they were a Chinese make called JINYU.
They looked very good, plenty of information printed on the tyre wall. He stated that car rides very well and quiet, in fact he stated that there was less tyre noise on this car than his older X5 which was fitted with Continentals.
Out of interest i did a bit of calling around and a local tyre shop could supply and fit these tyres in 255/60/17 for £70 a corner. As with all things, if you research some say they are great, some say they are ok, some say they are really bad.
To reply to one question, I would really like a nice estate car, Ford or BMW or Mercedes, but my wife pulls a horse trailer about with her horses in it, so we have to have a large 4x4, mores the pity. I also have to use it for work, as she would never give up her beloved Mini, unless she wanted to use the Mercedes. Hence, it hardly ever goes over 50 mph, its driven like i am really old ( yep, i am the one that just pooddles about) hence a performance tyre is just not needed.
There, wait for the replies now.

My Evo came with a set of Jinyu tyres, those things are dangerous! The main issue for me was that they had absolutely no sidewall strength, any decent steering movement and you could feel them rolling underneath the car. I imagine this is why comfort seemed fine!

Might be ok for 99% of situations but I wouldn't want them on when any kind of performance is required, braking or otherwise

 

[Bellow]

My Evo came with a set of Jinyu tyres, those things are dangerous! The main issue for me was that they had absolutely no sidewall strength, any decent steering movement and you could feel them rolling underneath the car. I imagine this is why comfort seemed fine!

Might be ok for 99% of situations but I wouldn't want them on when any kind of performance is required, braking or otherwise

Fitted to a 2.5 tonne X5 we can only hope the driver makes the necessary adjustments in their driving.
Or should I also drive a 2.5 tonne behemoth for my own safety? Oh for a return to sanity.

 

[Mactech]

I have worked with most of the leading tyre manufacturers in motorsport. Michelin are the very best and you pay for that privilege.
To be honest, there is not great deal, in technology terms, between all the other leading brands, and some suit some road cars better than others.
On my GLE, I have Avon ZX7 because they demonstrably beat all the other brands in most of the important criteria. Better in all ways than the Pirelli tyres I took off with the added bonus of being just 60% of the price. They are now on19k miles and will cover 25k comfortably.
I have won races on Avon ranging from F3 to the recent Bentley GT3 car.
I trusted this Jaguar on Avon tyres to climb Pikes Peak.

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I just fitted a set of Avons ZV7 to my MX-5 and they grip wonderfully wet or dry, and reduce road noise.
My Land Rover Defender has been on the same set of Avon Ranger AT for over 5 years now, they are in danger of going 'off' before they wear out!

 

[Joderest]

Hmmm
Just did a quick search for an AVON 255/60/17 and could not find one, do they produce that tyre size ?
I hope there will be some more replies to this thread, its intriguing me, tyres are something i have never really given a lot of thought to, just bought decent brands, but now !!!!!!

 

[Mactech]

There doesn't seem to be stock of many tyres of that size now, and no, Avon do not make that size!
A quick check on Camskills site, they list about a dozen makes but have stock of only Michelin, a very unusual situation, so I can only assume the size is becoming much less popular.
Just don't settle for some Chinese 'Sureslip Ditchfinders'

 

[190]

60 aspect ratio is a bit of an odd one. Commonly used on vans but rarer on cars which makes them expensive when you can find them. My 195/60/16 tyres are anything up to twice the price of a 205/55/16 which is a vastly more popular size.

 

[Bobby Dazzler]

Hmmm
Just did a quick search for an AVON 255/60/17 and could not find one, do they produce that tyre size ?
I hope there will be some more replies to this thread, its intriguing me, tyres are something i have never really given a lot of thought to, just bought decent brands, but now !!!!!!

Oponeo list 255/60 17 Tyres from Continental, Dunlop, Bridgestone, Michelin, Good Year, Yokohama, Nokian, etc. I tried a few brands on our ML270 CDi - Continental, Pirelli, Dunlop and found Continental to be the best for me, they also lasted longest. I never did try Michelin on that car though.

 

[Joderest]

Thanks all.
This debate could go on for years.
Unfortunately, as much as i would like to change tyre size, i cannot, been told that i have the wider wheels, and 255/60/17 is the best i can go to without buying the slimmer wheels, then i could drop down to a 235 but still have to keep the 60 profile.
Something to do with steering angle sensor and other related things, like size of disc's (it has the large disc's with four pot callipers on the front and two pot callipers on the rear)
Please correct me if i am incorrect, Please !!!!!!

 

[Joderest]

Just remembered something from my dim, distant past.
In the 1970's(yes i am that old) i worked briefly at the FIRESTONE site in Brentford. I was on the tyre production line cutting rubber for the tyre builders. I can remember that at times they stopped production of the FIRESTONE branded tyres and did something with the presses, then started production again, they used the same rubber, the same tyre builders but produced a different brand of tyre, i cannot remember what it was called, but it was cheaper than the branded FIRESTONE tyre, but was the same except for the branding.
It was a horrible job, very dirty and dangerous, i lasted about 3 months before i left.
I wonder if that still goes on.

 

[Joderest]

oh i keep looking, can anyone comment on the below information.............................

Accellera are the UK brand name for Apollo Tire, who own Vredestein. So, they're basically the Vredestein budget brand.

found this on the interweb !!!!!! (fast and loud)

 

[MercedesDriver]

oh i keep looking, can anyone comment on the below information.............................

Accellera are the UK brand name for Apollo Tire, who own Vredestein. So, they're basically the Vredestein budget brand.

found this on the interweb !!!!!! (fast and loud)

Few years ago I had two of Accellera tyres fitted when I bought a car. Horrible ride and looked like they were made of plastic. If you are looking for a budget tyre look for Nexen. I have them as a winter set and the performance and the noise are on a par with top brands.

 

[Joderest]

well, NEXEN do the size, and a google is same as all tyres, some say great, some say not so great, but all say ok.
Keep the comments coming guys

 

[190]

I've had good experience with Nexen Eco Blue's. In the reviews for this particular tyre it was knocking on the door of the premium brands.

 

[E55BOF]

My '03 ML320 has Avons on it - Rangers. I was idly Googling tyres for it on Tyres on the Drive the other day, and the Avon ZX-7 came up. Much better than the Rangers in every way according to the specs, so I'll go with the ZX-7 when I need tyres.

 

[reverend]

I used to use Toyo Proxes a lot years ago, I've tried a couple of sets of Nexen N3000 which were fine, the worst I've had were about 12 years ago and were Maxxis tyres - not sure which model but they'd spin at every opportunity.

I went through I think 2 or 3 sets of Goodyear Eagle F1 asymmetric 3s which I always rated - I tried a set of the Pirelli Cinturato P7 Blues which I didn't see much difference with economy wise to the Goodyears on that same car. I did hit a pothole one time and the alloy cracked clean in two with those on so I've never bought those since, but a car I bought had different Pirelli's all around and has been fine on lots of milage.

As I've gotten older I tend to stick to the premium brands and swap between summer and winter tyres as needed (another can of worms) and try and get ones with good rim protectors where possible.

Winter wise I've had Dunlop Winter Sport 3ds and Continental WinterSport TS850ps which were both very good in bad weather but the Dunlops did start to break up when the weather warmed back up so you had to remember to swap back to summers.

Summer wise the last car had Continental EcoContact which were fine, it was a SUV so they did the job in all weather.

The MB I bought recently came with 3 Dunlop Sport Maxx 3 RT2s and 1 Goodyear F1 Assymetric 3 - I'm not a fan of having different tyres on the same axle so I'll be sorting that out if I stay with the 17s.

 

[Smart320]

My wife's RAV4 came with a couple of Nexen tyres on it, they were ok, not too noisy but I switched them for Goodyear once they were over half worn as I wanted 4 new tyres

 

[OneForTheRoad]

Accellera tyres become lets say unpredictable in the wet when at half tread. I had a few touching cloth moments in my fwd passat.

 

[Joderest]

Great information here.
At the moment the Nexen is winning if I am short of cash, the contis if I have enough.

 

[TeddyRuxpin]

Avoid Accelera for sure, bad experience with them

Apparently the only ‘not bad for a budget’ tyre is the Rotalla RU01

I would try to get falkens, uniroyal rain sport 3s or avon zz5.

For people who don't believe me about accelera... look at that aquaplaning performance...

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[400ixl]

Nexen and Kumho are often pushed by tyre suppliers as they make great margins on them (they also pay to sponsor many of the reviews you see published). Both would seem ok to most people, but they have a horrible characteristic of giving little warnign of when they are going to give up their grip. It is quite extreme, and this isn't what you want to happen. Most people never experience the limit (traction control masks some of it these days) but it you do they can be an awful tyre.

Get something from the better end of budget that has the characteristics of giving up grip in a progressive manner. Something from Falken, Hankook, Uniroyal in this range or something premium.