Time for new tires... choices

[Stevo F]

It's time to replace the worn, noisy leaking tires that came on our 2005 Impreza Outback Sport when we bought it last winter.

 

I'm looking for a reasonably priced tire with decent traction (but not a dedicated winter tire- not really justifiable here in VA). The car is a daily driver/ grocery getter, so not looking for a performance oriented tire- just something for general use.

 

What are some tires that you've had good luck with on your Subie?

[TKFlight]

Goodyear Eagles, bought them by themselves and got them put on when the mechanic inspected my legacy. I think it was under $100 a tire like 80 a piece I believe, but that tire place gives deals on new tires so not sure if you can land the same price.

[carfreak85]

I love me some Michelin tires.  They are definatly at the upper end of the price spectrum, but you can't argue with quality.  We just put some Continentals on the wife's Forester, but she was being budget concious (I had Michelins picked out, they were only like $15-20 more per tire).

[idosubaru]

General Altimax RT43's have some good reviews for being cheap - I've seen a few people buying them lately but not any real world experience yet as I installed a set last week.

 

+1 Michellins are the one tire brand where you get a good product no matter which one you buy.  Great company and product but they are pricey.  Any other manufacturer generally has some good and some lesser or outright bad tires.

[1 Lucky Texan]

I've been liking Kumho for my soobs, not sure which model would be good for your climate.

Edited November 11, 2014 by 1 Lucky Texan

[tbolt1003]

I've had great luck with the Kelly Explorer Plus. Overall excellent wet and dry traction and decent in snow. Got our Forester through one storm last year that dumped a foot on us overnight.

[Bushwick]

I buy my new tires from tirerack.com. They show actual ratings and many tires are actually tested to give their reviews. Even with shipping (from Indiana warehouse) I bought some really nice Japanese tires for my Saab when I with the BBS in my avatar. Total price shipped was under $450. They also have authorized install locations (basically mechanics that will honor their tires to install as some places are picky) so use their locator. Some places charge more per tire than others, so keep that in mind. One place might charge $15 per tire to install (normal) while the other place might charge $25, which means you just wasted $40. To even get a local place to put similar quality tires on, it would have been $100-200+ MORE.

[mikaleda]

Hankook I pike, exelent clean out and factory sipeing, only bad part is they are a little soft and do wear a little fast.

[heartless]

Cooper CS series touring tires - I think they are currently CS5 - I have had CS4s and they were very good tires

 

Mastercraft Avenger - made by Cooper Tires. Excellent all season tire with good tread life rating - a cheaper alternative to the Cooper CS series. I have a set of these on my 95 Legacy right now, and we just got hit with our first winter storm - they have performed quite nicely. The other half is running a set on his 2006 Outback, too.

[Fairtax4me]

Continental just came out with a new low rolling resistance tire called the PureContact. A friend of mine has them on his accord and they are NICE! Very quiet, especially noticable over expansion joints and the gaps betwen road surfaces. He also picked up about 2mpg over the old tires (they were some off-brand cheapos).

Excellent rain traction and a very high treadwear rating as well.

And they were only about $85 each.

[SnatchedHatch]

My recommendation is either a well rated Goodyear All-season, or a
Falken or even Continental All-season if you don't mind the increase in
price. Myself, I don't take this choice lightly: I dig around for awhile before I settle.

I've started a queue on TireRack
http://www.tirerack.com/tires/TireSearchResults.jsp?filtering=true&width=205%2F&ratio=55&diameter=16&autoMake=Subaru&autoYear=2005&autoModel=Impreza%20Outback%20Sport&autoModClar=&sortCode=44950&tireIndex=0&wtpackage=false
given your Make and Model (2005) and I deselected performance and winter categories.
Tires sorted by consumer rating.
From there, you can find ones you like based on price and rating, and even
select a number of them to compare tire rating specifics! (Select on the left, once all the ones you want are selected, hit compare at the top)

I've got some experience with tires, to round up what I've seen on this thread.
ITT: Do go on Tirerack or Consumer Reports (although they always have last seasons
model's), or other similar website, to get real world ratings of the
tires and a reasonable comparison of metered performance in certain
categories. I focus on the ones with a proper # of customer reviews.

These sites can also walk you through the 3 tiers of tires:
low, mid, upper/Good,better,best which have a direct influence on tire performance.. this is a short summary of all 3
http://www.americastire.com/dtcs/brochure/tire/gbb.jsp

Mid and Upper is where I'd stick with, that's mainly because I have to deal with the horrible winters up in Chicago.
While a tire like the General Altimax (I had the HP+) will do well for cost and wet and dry performance, it doesn't perform well enough in the snow.

Michelins generally are great
in all areas, but watch out, they too are made from soft rubber,
especially the performance All-seasons and High-performance All-seasons.
Tread life is low.
I had a new set of Michelin Pilot Sports, the dry/wet/snow traction was unbelievably good.
After one year, the top layer wore away enough that there was a significant drop in dry and snow performance.
Another year and I no longer considered them "performance" all-seasons.
Lasted me 3 years those  if you have the money, nothing better though!

Continentals are about as good as Michelins,
I agree with Carfreak85 's consensus. I feel it's worth the extra 10-20
bucks, but truth be told the drop in performance isn't that bad if you
really would rather save $50-$80.

Goodyear Eagles (the sport/performance all-season models) were great at everything, except when cold. Traction is lacking at winter temps.

The Economy low-rolling resistance tires are great in respects of Fuel economy and rolling noise, but they SUCK in the snow.

You mentioned your climate, if you don't have to worry about snow so much as us in the North,
Kumho's
are an economical tire, they are low to mid-range and generally aren't
too good in the snow. Not bad for wet and dry vitals.
Hankook's and Falken's are mid to upper range, and make great winter or proper all-season tires.
Toyo's are good tire, not familiar with their winter performance.


One
last bit, when I bought those Michelin's, a buddy bragged that he just
got a new set of Kumho's for his Mitsubishi EVO, mainly to rub in my
face that he saved a lot (probably like $100~200) over mine.
My
FWD car had zero issues, while days later he called me bewildered that
with his AWD and new tires, he was still sliding just trying to drive
down the road.

 

Edited November 18, 2014 by SnatchedHatch

[Bushwick]

Snatchedhatch made some good points about the dry/wet/braking/snow/noise, etc. of a tire. I spent awhile on tirerack learning about all the different ratings and trying to get a "new eyed" insight into what would work best for the intended car. What was amazing is how some well known tires excel at one area, and are completely lousy in others. I focused on all-around handling wet/dry/stop and went with the tires that were getting the most positive reviews from the people buying them. People doing write-ups about their tires is fairly brutal and appears uncensored (on that site). So if the tire has lousy dry/wet braking, or their MPG increased by 1 point, you'll read an eyeful.

[mikaleda]

you can take a cheap tire and have it siped and you can make most any tire into a good all season tire without sacrificing tread wear.

I've done this many times when I bought a tire that didn't perform well in the winter and I've been quite happy with the results

Edited November 12, 2014 by mikaleda

[SnatchedHatch]

Hmm, having worked at a shop that operated a siping machine, I can only agree on your point so far as if it is done on a cheap tire.

I beg to differ as far as treadlife, its likely to drop.

 

In fact, sipping is highly shunned when considering a quality tire.

It goes against all design and *will* kill the tread life.

 

The consensus of my coworkers, it's just a gimick for the hoards.

 

Then again, it will boost the snow performance of a cheap tire and it won't cost you as much in the long run.

 

Quality tires should work well enough in the snow on their original designs.

Even my own chain store had many compelling reasons for manual siping (such as the original manufacturing process cannot make such fine sipes as the machine can cut).

 

I'm running off here, but take the Michelin's I had. They had soft rubber and special grooves to deal with snow. Hmm my coworkers winced when I asked if I could sipe them probono, it's like taking a hammer to a model battleship.

you can take a cheap tire and have it siped and you can make most any tire into a good all season tire without sacrificing tread wear.

I've done this many times when I bought a tire that didn't perform well in the winter and I've been quite happy with the results

Edited November 13, 2014 by SnatchedHatch

[Bushwick]

What is sipping? Are you guys talking about adding studs or something?

[Stevo F]

Thank you all for the advice and suggestions.

 

I'm looking at different tires and tire reviews at Tirerack. Given I'm looking for something decent for $500 or so for a set, the Goodyear AltiMAX RT43's seem like good all around tires, even in winter. I'm comparing them to the Michelin Defenders we put on our Legacy last year (which after 13,000 miles seem decent, but weren't really great in the snow last year). A lot of reviews for the Defenders were saying people were only getting 40K miles from a tire rated for $90K,

which hardly seems worth paying $650 for a set (it was $550 for the set 14" tires on our Legacy).

 

One local tire place is quoting $472 a set installed for the AltiMAX and I'll have to check with the other place we deal with in town. For me, that seems like a good price for a tire I might expect to get 50K miles out of (they are rate dfor 75,000 miles).

[SnatchedHatch]

.

Edited November 19, 2014 by SnatchedHatch

[Bushwick]

One local tire place is quoting $472 a set installed for the AltiMAX and I'll have to check with the other place we deal with in town. For me, that seems like a good price for a tire I might expect to get 50K miles out of (they are rate dfor 75,000 miles).

 

What size rims do you have? $472 installed isn't bad considering mount and balance is included.

[bluedotsnow]

if you do some snow driving but need all season wear I would go with the general altimax arctic, yes it is a snow flake rated tire but they also have a dual tread compound that dosn't ware that fast on dry roads. that being said I wouldn't drive on these in temps over 90 degrees but they do work as a year round tire I and several friends have done just that. EXCELLENT snow handling and relatively good all around tire NOT PERFORMANCE and a little squishy but hay for a grocery wagon...  I got a set of 205/60/16's for $300 when I compare that to say hancook 7/24's that i have also owned and payed a little more for the generals lasted longer had much better wet/snow traction when I needed it most. the hancoocks were ok but I would say I got more for my money with the general altimax arctics!

[mikaleda]

Hmm, having worked at a shop that operated a siping machine, I can only agree on your point so far as if it is done on a cheap tire.

I beg to differ as far as treadlife, its likely to drop.

 

In fact, sipping is highly shunned when considering a quality tire.

It goes against all design and *will* kill the tread life.

 

The consensus of my coworkers, it's just a gimick for the hoards.

 

Then again, it will boost the snow performance of a cheap tire and it won't cost you as much in the long run.

 

Quality tires should work well enough in the snow on their original designs.

Even my own chain store had many compelling reasons for manual siping (such as the original manufacturing process cannot make such fine sipes as the machine can cut).

 

I'm running off here, but take the Michelin's I had. They had soft rubber and special grooves to deal with snow. Hmm my coworkers winced when I asked if I could sipe them probono, it's like taking a hammer to a model battleship.

 

It depends on the tire, if the tire is factory siped and is resiped or if it's a soft tire already, yes it will kill read life, but I have run siped tires on all my rigs since I started driving and on cheap tires that have a hard tread it doesn't reduce Tread life at all and greatly increases traction, and can extend tire life since the treas wears more evenly.

[mikaleda]

What is sipping? Are you guys talking about adding studs or something?

Siping is making razor blade thickness cuts along the tread of the whole tire surface, letting a hard tire flex more and wear more evenly, and for the most part this is great for an all season tire.

And if it greatly reduces tread life then let Schwab would be losing a lot of money on their tread wear garuntee that is not affected by having your tires sipped, they will tell you though if its a bad idea to siped certain tires

[carfreak85]

It depends on the tire, if the tire is factory siped and is resiped or if it's a soft tire already, yes it will kill read life, but I have run siped tires on all my rigs since I started driving and on cheap tires that have a hard tread it doesn't reduce Tread life at all and greatly increases traction, and can extend tire life since the treas wears more evenly.

 

I'm going to have to disagree.  Siping introduces new "edges" into the tread, which helps wet and snow traction by providing more "teeth" to dig into the water/snow.  While helpful for traction, these new "edges" will wear from sharp, new edges, to blunt, radiused edges.  The cuts introduce a new point of wear at the surface of the tire and these new surfaces wear, just like the rest of the tire.

 

In addition, you're cutting up the tread blocks.  Now, all tires have tread blocks.  These will distort as you hit a bump, roll over a pot-hole or go around a corner.  When you sipe a tire you are weakening the tread block at the point where it touches all these irregularities in the road.  This can cause little chunks of rubber to tear away from the edge of the sipe (called "chunking") and not only will that reduce the surface area of your contact patch, but it further weakens the tread block.  It's a visious cycle.

 

It will not extend the life of the tire.  Period.  Now if you can show me an SAE whitepaper that proves otherwise, I will certainly change my tune, but the fact reamains that if you cut up the surface of a tire, that surface has been weakened and will wear more quickly.  Maybe not by a huge amount, but every little bit helps.

 

Les Schwab doesn't care if your tires meet their treadlife ratings.  Most people don't remember the treadlife warranty anyway.  Think about what Les Schwab and how they make money.  They want to sell you more tires and siping is just an upsell they can make to fatten each transaction.

Edited November 13, 2014 by carfreak85

[Rooster2]

I'm going to have to disagree.  Siping introduces new "edges" into the tread, which helps wet and snow traction by providing more "teeth" to dig into the water/snow.  While helpful for traction, these new "edges" will wear from sharp, new edges, to blunt, radiused edges.  The cuts introduce a new point of wear at the surface of the tire and these new surfaces wear, just like the rest of the tire.

 

In addition, you're cutting up the tread blocks.  Now, all tires have tread blocks.  These will distort as you hit a bump, roll over a pot-hole or go around a corner.  When you sipe a tire you are weakening the tread block at the point where it touches all these irregularities in the road.  This can cause little chunks of rubber to tear away from the edge of the sipe (called "chunking") and not only will that reduce the surface area of your contact patch, but it further weakens the tread block.  It's a visious cycle.

 

It will not extend the life of the tire.  Period.  Now if you can show me an SAE whitepaper that proves otherwise, I will certainly change my tune, but the fact reamains that if you cut up the surface of a tire, that surface has been weakened and will wear more quickly.  Maybe not by a huge amount, but every little bit helps.

 

Les Schwab doesn't care if your tires meet their treadlife ratings.  Most people don't remember the treadlife warranty anyway.  Think about what Les Schwab and how they make money.  They want to sell you more tires and siping is just an upsell they can make to fatten each transaction.

I agree with commentary above. If siping were such a good idea, then the tire manufacturers would sell their tires manufactured that way. To some extent they do so, when you see channels cut into the tire tread to push water to the inside and outside of the tire to reduce hydroplaning. To add extra sipping beyond what the manufacturer produces doesn't make any sense.

[SnatchedHatch]

Boost overall tire life?

If your tire wore unevenly under normal driving circumstances, than that's some cheap Chinese tire!

But I understand not all of our rides have perfect alignment etc, so I guess that's true.

 

Just to clear up, the factory sipes I mentioned are not cut-in but rather molded in with the entire tread.

I tried to say that while my shop gave compelling reasons why siping is a must (like cutting > molded), it's only a good idea in certain situations.

 

Shoot.. I might just try this out on some cheap tires next year

 

It depends on the tire, if the tire is factory siped and is resiped or if it's a soft tire already, yes it will kill read life, but I have run siped tires on all my rigs since I started driving and on cheap tires that have a hard tread it doesn't reduce Tread life at all and greatly increases traction, and can extend tire life since the treas wears more evenly.

[mikec03]

I have an 02.  The Goodyear Eagles, as mentioned above, are good highway tires and good in snow and skid resistance.  I've had them on for 3 years.  I live in Milwaukee and I think that skid resistance is the most important attribute in tires.  I didn't get that the Michelin were that good in wet conditions or I would have bought them.