[Closed] I will never buy cheap van tires again!!!

As cyclists know it's not just the crap grip, it's the carcass and compound combining to give you a stiff, uncomfortable ride. We have budget Kumhos on Mrs Gti's C1 in summer and they are choppy and uncomfortable; by contrast the winter tyres give a much better ride but that's probably due to the softer compound.

I need some tyres for the car shortly and a neighbour has told me of a cheap place.They've quoted £25 a tyre inc fitting,for a Mondeo,and i'm wondering just what you get for £25.Even budget tyres start around £50 each.

How many parts of your car are in contact with the ground? Approximately 4 (accounting for the occasional reliant) - So yeah why the hell would you scrimp on tyres?

It's your one contact point with the earth ffs!

I wouldn't buy £25 tyres its just that i can't believe they can be turned out for that and be legal(not nicked,just not fit for the road).

Thanks Toby. You've cleared that one up for me!! 🙄

cheap van tyres (for my transporter) come in at £84, top spec continentals come in at £125. that's not that much difference. £160 all round.

my tyre fitter told me some horrendous stories about cheap tyres.

http://www.motorcaravanning.com/vehicles/tyre_test.htm

look at the wet stopping distances. this is why i always make sure i get conti tyres.

Sorry wrightyson, I know it didn't help much I just don't know why people do it - my Mum does all the time and her car drives horribly as a result. So my annoyance is really misdirected 🙂

I guess I've crashed enough to learn to value decent contact with the road.

try maxxis van pro wrighty good middle ground.

Last time I had fronts fitted I had uniroyal rainsports, good middle ish tyre. Because things were tight this time round I foolishly said just stick the budgets on!! I can get them to torque steer in the dry so you can imagine their awesomeness in the snow and ice 😆

Last time I had fronts fitted I had uniroyal rainsports

Very good tyres for the money I'm really impressed with them.

Skimping on tyres is a bit of a false ecoonomy a good mid piced brand like Uniroyal or Toyo is as much as I would skimp.

There is a reason the cheap tyres are known as "ditchfinders"
EDIT (of course I hope you don't find out why!)

wrightyson - I always go for conti Vanco tyres on my T4. Good grip, last well, but do tend to roll a bit once theyve been on for a while. Then they get shipped to the rear axle and new boots go on the front.

What tyres for the M25?

[i]What tyres for the M25? [/i]

Snow chains!

What tyres for the M25?

Doesn't really matter, you'll be doing <30 most of the time anyway 😉

My cheap £25 tyres (came on the car) literally disintegrated on me - carcass bulged creating slight eggs (almost un-noticeable without taking the wheels off and giving them a good look over, I did try to figure out why I had a slight wobble on the steering by jacking it up and spinning them, it wasn't obvious) which caused serious grip issues and within a hundred miles or so the rubber parted company with the fabric.

All of my local tyre places automatically jump to the cheapest possible tyre for the size you select. "I want a decent mid-range tyre" - we have Barum's for £28 each, they're made from the same moulds as bobs third sisters favourite tyre similar to those Michelins over there - all the taxi drivers love them. Great, I'll take something else, thanks!

When I got my car the guy had replaced the front tyres that were almost bald when i viewed it. I told him to either drop the price by £120 or replace the tyres. So he's put Formula 2000's on.

They were not too bad in the dry, but in the wet they were atrocious.
At normal speeds in the wet they would wheelspin off roundabouts in third and every corner was an understeer treat unless treated very carefully indeed.

I have fitted Matador tyres to my Ibiza for the last few sets and they are pretty good. Apparently they are owned by Continental so use a lot of their technology.
They are quiet, wear well and grip pretty well in wet & dry conditions. I have gone for Hectorra 2 MP46's and just bought some from Camskill - 2 for about £103 delivered.

I have Conti Vancos on a FWD Transit motorhome. They are really poor for grip IMO, wheelspinning especially on wet summer roads, and I am aware that an element of this will be due to the loading characteristics of a m'home...

In the winter I run Fulda Conveo Tracs on the front and Vredstein Comtrac AllSeasons on the rear. Both are M+S and Snowflake marked. The difference is incredible.

I will be rotating the Vredesteins to the front, with the Contis on the rear for the summer this year.

Pointless fitting cheap tyres, they wear quick and unevenly and then bang, and if like me you had 2 lucky escapes you dont buy cheap.

Mine came with a different ditchfinder on each corner, magic, never really knew which direction it was travelling in. On the bright side it meant that even my mid-price Kumhos feel like formula one tyres by contrast.

they wear quick

Actually I never found this with cheap tyres, they normally last FOREVER and grip like they're made of plastic too. Normally seem to fall apart before wearing out.

Nokian FTW.

Actually I never found this with cheap tyres, they normally last FOREVER and grip like they're made of plastic too.

^ This!

Cheap tyres tend to last a long time actually. They are made of brick hard rubber which offers next to zero grip but on the upside the rubber is so hard they last ages.

Regarding the £25 tyres, they are either A: remoulds or B: Part worns. The budget tyres i sell at work even in the smallest sizes like 14 cost us around £25, so for a company to be selling them at £25 fitted they must be buying them in at £10-£15 each which just isn't going to happen.

This is a good topic for me, I need to fit some new tyres to a car as they look past their best. Is there a good budget brand as it is not worth spending money on the car. Are Euromaster and kwikfit reputable outlets or should I like at a dealer or indy?

Go on camskills, find you're size and brand then ring round the local smaller outfits. Most will try and match their price then add a tenner a corner to fit them!

Tails - IME- avoid own brands / unknown brands. EG Kwik Fit's Ceat. They will last forever - probably longer than you. Also anything Chinese branded (usually with an English name like TopRank) is crap.

Mid range brands OK and are good for the cash - Uniroyal, Fulda, Toyo, ...

Online places are good if you're picky about what you want and will spend some time checking reviews. Otherwise I'd go for a local indy and stick to something you've heard of.

I was skint when the car needed an mot and put 3 budget tyres from Kwikfit on .Thet are garbage ,no grip at all even if it is slightly damp

Just drive sensibly and you'll not have a problem folks.

Bizarrely, I've had every type of tyre under the sun: Remoulds, very cheap new, mid range, top price over the years. And I've had just about every make under the sun when I drove an Escort van 40,000 miles a year. And you know what, I can tell very little difference between any of them. Some last longer, some are a touch noisier, one set made the steering a bit heavier, but it was all only minor details

How can I put this? Hmmm? The driver is more important than the tyres, maybe?

I was skint when the car needed an mot and put 3 budget tyres from Kwikfit on

Edric - are you Del boy?

i pay 65 fitted a corner for my renault trafic.. they last about 30k

went from winter tires on my van which was almost unstopable on real snow covered roads last year - till you reached my 2.5 mile dirt track to the house where ground clearance stopped it ....

this year i put it to my mechanic for service and mot and asked for 2 new tires - he stuck on ditchfinder plus i think..... they were garbage in the dry and the wet and its garbage in snow this year - they have almost worn out hardly surprising if my 69bhp can make them slide about like nowt on earth without spirited driving!!!!!- they hav done about 10k miles. - my previous tires were on for 30k that i have had the van and what ever before that

going in for winter tires again once the prices calm down - i just drive slowely for now !.

the mrs'golf is on hankook winter tires - its impressively amaizing really what it can do on them but again limited by ground clearance !

The driver is more important than the tyres, maybe?

At the risk of calling you a smart-arse, PP, the driver is quite obviously the most important part of the equation. However it's not unreasonable to point out that some tyres are much better than others, is it? You may not have had a problem, but perhaps you were not in a situation where such grip was needed.

I don't find myself in that situation either typically, but I'm not going to bet my safety that I never will be!

Utter rubbish pp! If you can't tell the difference between good and bad tyres then you either drive like miss daisy or are totally oblivious to the road/vehicle/weather/situation in which you're driving! I always buy good tyres for the car because it gets ragged nown again by me and driven 80% of the time by the wife with the kids in, so I like to think they'll hold on as much as possible! Example, going from Toyos (came with them on) to vred ultrac ssesantas. The vreds were incredible in the wet, but they had a slightly softer side wall and when cornering at high speed you could definitely feel a little give as they rolled on the edges! The Toyos, no warning, boom they would let go with no sign of a warning and into oversteer mode.

Edric - are you Del boy? No the other tyre was still ok 😆