Car tyres.

[graham bowers]

[QUOTE 4978744, member: 45"]Ignore all this 3mm drama and just drive really slowly.[/QUOTE]

Reads like Viz advice ;-))

 

[snorri]

Why?

I think it's a waste of money paying to have tyres changed around, unless you are able to negotiate a very good deal when you eventually replace all four (or five) on the same day.
With all tyres evenly worn and close to the limit there is a risk of them all being found out of limits in the event of a roadside check following a routine check or traffic incident.

 

[Richard A Thackeray]

The tyres on my ('11' plate') Octavia estate are seemingly okay
It's got a pair of Evergreen on the front (as recommended/supplied, by our very trusted usual garage)
These went on, with a service, at 91,000 miles - just checked back
It's now on, roughly, 118,000miles, & at a guess there's 5 - 6mm of tread left
They're quiet, roll well, grip very adequately in wet & dry (even on muddy fields)


The Coopers on the rear are 50,000+ old, & fine
The original Dunlop SP (I think, they were) 'castellated' & wore on alternate blocks, & were very noisy

 

[lazybloke]

Its not a selling tactic. Been proven time and again. Performance drops off a cliff on the graph at this point, on wet or dry roads.

Tread moves a fixed volume of water away from the road surface for a particular set speed. That volume of water you need to shift doesn't change, but as the volume of tyre tread reduces, so there is less volume of tread to shift the same volume if water. Water is incompressible so once the volume of tread reduces beyond the volume of water, then that water has nowhere to go and your tyre starts to ride on a cushion of water. Most of the time you won't even be aware this is happening, but it most assuredly is.

The mechanics behind the operation of tyre tread are quite simple. There is a vast reservoir of independent testing out there, including MIRA, TRL, NTSB, French MTE, German TuV, and dozens of others, and they all say the same. None of these organisations sell tyres or have any financial axe to grind

I'm not denying that aquaplaning exists , just that in my experience it has been easily avoided.

I'd better read that report before I say anymore.

 

[gavroche]

Aquaplaning is primarily caused by speed. F1 drivers can aquaplane with new wet tyres if they go too fast . So if you adjust your speed to the conditions, unless you have bold tyres, you will not aquaplane.

 

[Levo-Lon]

Aquaplaning is primarily caused by speed. F1 drivers can aquaplane with new wet tyres if they go too fast . So if you adjust your speed to the conditions, unless you have bold tyres, you will not aquaplane.

True but the wider the tyre the more likely it will happen.

The safty point is you cant asses rear grip in a car like you can with the front tyres.
So you may feel like you have good grip steering and then waloop the rear overtakes you.
If you drive very slowly you may well be fine But why take the risk?

 

[lazybloke]

Okay, have read the report and now realise we're talking about braking distance in the wet as well as aquaplaning.
Not a great RoSPA report as it appears to have been executed at only one speed. What speed was it?

I don't doubt that tread depth is important, but I have a suspicion that a 3mm minimum tread depth is only important if you drive at a speed/manner that I or other drivers might consider "unsuitable". The report doesn't give me anything like enough information to decide, but it's perked my interest enough to do some more investigating. I'll be Googling later.

Decent tyres and decent driving are not mutually exclusive, I'll accept that!

(@Drago - you said [tyre] performance drops off a cliff on dry roads too - care to explain?)

 

[keithmac]

I managed a day out of a set of brand new Goodyear Eagle F1's on my Mk2 Golf GTI 16v.

Trackday at Donnington, turned out quite expensive but well worth it!.

 

[gavroche]

I will change the front tyres soon but will put the back ones at the front and the new ones at the back, this is the advice I got from my brother who knows his stuff as it is part of his job. The reason for that is: in the wet, the front tyres send the water to the rear which creates more work for the back tyres to disperse the water, hence brand new at the back , deeper treads.

 

[Drago]

Aquaplaning is primarily caused by speed. F1 drivers can aquaplane with new wet tyres if they go too fast . So if you adjust your speed to the conditions, unless you have bold tyres, you will not aquaplane.

Too fast being how fast exactly?

Your Bother is right, but for completely the wrong reason.

 

[midlife]

I will change the front tyres soon but will put the back ones at the front and the new ones at the back, this is the advice I got from my brother who knows his stuff as it is part of his job. The reason for that is: in the wet, the front tyres send the water to the rear which creates more work for the back tyres to disperse the water, hence brand new at the back , deeper treads.

I would have thought the front tyres would have cleared some water from the road surface sideways making a slightly "drier" bit of road for the rears to follow into?

 

[gavroche]

Too fast being how fast exactly?

Your Bother is right, but for completely the wrong reason.

My brother is right for completely the right reasons as he has driven cars in both conditions so he has first hand experience of it.

 

[Accy cyclist]

I've just measure the tread on the four tyres on my car and the spare. The Yokohama tyres on the car are exactly 1 centimeter in the middle. The tread on the Continental spare is 1.1 centimeters in the middle. They all must be virtually new?

 

[Ming the Merciless]

This is why I never drive a Ford. You would just be asking for trouble.

 

[Richard A Thackeray]

Going up a few tyre sizes, regarding three of my old Land Rovers;
1. A 110 Hard-Top (300Tdi), that I put 40,000 miles on, with plenty of remaining tread on the Avon RangeMasters (7.50 x 16), that I swapped for a set of BF Goodrich Mud-Terrains (235/85 x 16)
They took another 20,000 before I sold it

2. Discovery Tdi (50th Anniversary)
235/70 x 16 BF Goodrich All-Terrains
30,000 miles, & seemingly only half-worn

3. Defender 110 'Heritage' (Station Wagon, on a Td5)
BF Goodrich All-Terrain
I put on 25,000 miles +, by the time they were replaced - at about 4mm (so, almost 45,000 miles)

This is why I never drive a Ford. You would just be asking for trouble.

My wife had a Mondeo, as a company car, when she worked for a health consultancy firm, it was a '04' plate, so a mark 3(??)
It was a 2.0TDCi, & had its first new front tyres at some daft mileage like 8,000

Plus, we had the grave misfortune to have a (1.8 petrol) C-Max, before the Octavia, & that was almost as voracious with regard to front rubber
It's easily the worst car we've ever had (& we had a Fiat Tempra estate once!)................... to the extent that the only thing I liked about it was the LED tail-lights
I used to leave it unlocked, with all 4 windows down, overnight, hoping someone would steal it
Regrettably no-one did