Hi all, need new front tyres for my Focus 1.6 (old shape) Zetec.

Been offered some Falcon tyres, £50 each fitted, which he says is quite a discout?

Just that Ive been looking on blackcircles.co.uk, and theres quite a few tyres in the £50-60 price range;

Nexen N2000
£50.37

Kumho KH31
£53.26

Toyo Proxes CF1
£55.27

Falken Ziex ZE-912
£57.29

Courier (by Pirelli) K Drive
£60.09

General Altimax HP
£56.48

Goodyear Excellence
£58.93

Dunlop SP Sport 200E
£60.47

etc. Tyres are 195/60 R15 V (88) if anyone wants to see for them selves.

Being a student, cheaper is better, but dont mind spending a bit more if its worth it. As ever, looking for a good balance between hard wearing, grip (especially now in the wetter months), fuel economy, and road noise (not overly important, to an extent).

Any thoughts?

Ta, Duane.

Falken aren't bad tyres, certainly a lot better than most other tyres in the same price range…

Check this out though…

http://www.camskill.co.uk/products.php?plid=m4b0s411p12886

You'd have to get them fitted at your local tyre shop (about £10 per wheel probably), but still saves you a few quid overall…

TBH, as long as you don't fit £10 RisingGlory Ditch Finders and drive like a certain M. Schumacher, anything will suffice.
If £££ matter, part worns may be worth a look. You can get some reet bargains that way. Either way, go along to your local backstreet tyre place (i.e. NOT Kwik Fit et al) and see what they've got. Always works for me.

Toyo Proxes CF1
£55.27 my preferred choice.soft compound so won,t last like the harder more plastic looking falkens but will stick like s**t to a blanket.not only are they a great tyre they look awesome

the falkens also get recalled in the us a hell of a lot & the road noise from them is terrible.
goodyear then followed by the dunlops but don,t touch the rest.

DO NOT buy parts worns this is not a wise investment.there maybe a couple of people genuine enough to sell part worns but not an option i would ever consider or reccomend.

Having just switched to some cheaper 'made by' tyres from Michelins I will be going straight back to premium brand asap! The grip is poorer, the compound is not as hard wearing.
If you intend on keeping the car for a number of years go to Kwik Fit who do a lifetime guarantee both on tyres and brake pads. A little dearer on initial purchase but worth it over the years even if fitting aftermarket pads.
Out of those listed I would go with either Dunlop or Goodyear. Thos that are 'made by' it is only the base carcass, the tread etc is applied after elsewhere as far as I am aware.

DO NOT buy parts worns this is not a wise investment.there maybe a couple of people genuine enough to sell part worns but not an option i would ever consider or reccomend.

So what do you get when you buy a used car?

If you're careful and buy from a reputable place, you'll be fine. Inspect the tyre yourself too.

my dad has been milking the kwik fit brake scheme for some time.

he has a E320 cdi tourer auto which eats brake pads every 10K.i laughed when he first took it to kwik fit but they have stuck to there word although i think they dred him turning up as he has also managed to black original teile mercedes-benz parts

Spend what you need to spend to make sure that the car doesn't let you down. I wouldn't skimp on tyres as you have to put a lot of faith into them.

I just had a look on a respected website(?) for you, and they don't have 195/60 R15V (88) Falken tyres in there, but other Falkens were rated Don't Buy.

Your Toyo tyres (the exact match) were rated good in the dry, but cons were the poor wet grip (also a con was that they were hard to find – not a bad thing in my book if they're no good!)

The Dunlop Sport (edit – they were Dunlop SP Sport Fastresponse, £56) tyres were a Best Buy, so I stopped looking at that point.

Please buy these.

I had some Hang Kyook (or something like that) tyres once they were dead cheap, but I immediately started getting electric shocks off the door/sill/any bit of metal I touched/the lock as I got out of the car. They also made exciting 80's american detective show screeches on corners. The traction was awful.

The most annoying thing was they ran for thousands and thousands of miles with no sign of wear…

if i ever buy a car the tyres would have to be at least have 6mm tread & i am a qualified mechanic so i know what to look for but duane is a switched on lad but most would not have a clue what they were buying.

IM SPEAKING FOR THE MASSES

those dunlops are pretty decent tyres.

Do be aware if you fit good new tyres just on the the front and keep worn, less grippy tyres on the rear you can have a tail happy front wheel drive car in the wet.

lol scotabroad ..quality

At the end of the day, the 4 bits of rubber at each corner are the only thing keeping you on the road. Don't scrimp on tyres its not worth it in the long run.
I can vouch for thr Toyo proxes, very good from what I can tell

Goodyear excellence are a decent tyre, we fit loads each day and I can't recall any complaints with them.
The dunlop sports depends if its the 2/300 sports or the fast responses, if it was the fast responses then they'd be my second choice,
seeing as you live in north wales, if its not to far there tyrewise in liverpool who are offering the old pattern Michelin energy savers for £58.32 probably excluding fitting, they also offer a mobile service, but not sure of there coverage area.

knott4me – whats to laugh at??

I bought those Kumho's for my Mondeo. They are pretty quiet, grippy, predictable, only downside was they seemed to wear a bit quicker than the tyres they replaced.

But it was a relatively quick and heavy 130TDCi that would spin its front wheels at the slightest excuse. Still cheaper than buying premium brand tyres.

Do be aware if you fit good new tyres just on the the front and keep worn, less grippy tyres on the rear you can have a tail happy front wheel drive car in the wet.

True! Any decent tyre place will advise fitting the new tyres to the rear…unless you are a driving god, a bit of gentle understeer is much much safer and easier to correct than oversteer, that will more than likely stick you into oncoming traffic or off the road!

They also made exciting 80's american detective show screeches on corners

you say that like its a bad thing?

is it just me that turns too sharply on purpose in shiney carparks with the windows wound down a crack?

Toyo Proxes T1-R FTW!!

Kumho are excellent tyres. Unrelated fact – they'll probably be the Formula 1 tyre in 2011 (not the 195/60 15s though).

Part worn tyres mostly come from Germany where the regulations on puncture repairs are more stringent, and you have to replace 2 tyres at a time. (L&R)

So if a German gets a puncture (in a part of the tyre where its legal to repair it here) he buys 2 new ones, the old set gets shipped here, one is repaired and they are then sold at £35 each.

Olly – the screeching was a good thing in carp arks and a scary thing on greasy wet A-roads.

And no, it's not just you making the noises 😉 I also have a tendency to do handbrake turns in forestry car parks

ran those kumho's on mine for 3 years (two sets of fronts one set on the rear), excellent tyres, mate who's a trader recommended them to me and would put them on anything now

i had the Kumho KH31 on my A4 previously and i'd recommend them over the Falken Ziex ZE-912 that are on it now. bothe are fine, but given a choice, the Khumos grip slightly better in the wet and wear better.

ive got shit hang gooks as well like the guy above – shit steer clear – also get the shock thing and terrible road noise …..

got em free though so they will do till i replace the car at the next mot …. i just drive slower.

hankook

tbh i'm a taxi driver and i change my tires every six weeks or so, and i'll go for part worns anyday i get top makes for 20 quid a tire and they do the job. i do about a 1000 miles a week with no probs

I'm a tyre engineer by profession & love reading some of the things written about tyres…
Makes me smile

Personally I would be nervous about fitting part worn tyres just because there is so much within a tyre that you cannot see. It's a fair comment that if you buy a 2nd hand car that is what you get also but I would certainly have a thorough check of the external condition of the tyres fitted to such a car.

The Auto Express team make a pretty good tyre test (it used to be available online), as do many German car / consumer mags. How's your German? check out the website from ADAC (reifentest).

General advice is buy one of the major branded tyres if your budget stretches to it. Pirelli, Mich, Conti, Goodyear, Dunlop, Bridgestone, Firestone. Hankook & Kumho are now also quality products.
Certainly in my company our tyres are tested very thoroughly for all performances & frequently evaluated against the other premium bands.

Most important advice is to avoid the very cheapest import brands from asia. There are surprisingly big differences when it comes to life saving performances like wet braking. It may be even that the ABS calibration no longer matches the grip level of these tyres and the net effect is a huge increase is absolute stopping distance.

I've used the Kumho's for several years on my last car and my current car – is it the KU31, rather than KH31s? They also do a KH11 which is a less 'sporty' tyre, but still rated as very good.

Also check out Camskill (google it) as they are pretty cheap, but don't offer a 'fitted' option. I have ordered twice from them now & delivery was cheap & quick. My KU31's in a 205/45/16 were almost smack on £50 and delivery for 4 tyres is only a tenner or so.

I don't agree with the 'stick any old tyres' on brigade. When i bought my car, I asked the seller to either knock £100 off the selling price or put some new fronts on as they were illegally worn. He put some really cheap tyres on – I think Black Circles were selling them for about £30 and accelerating at a 'normal' rate off a roundabout in the wet, they would spin in third gear; grip was a joke & they didn't wear very well either.

I cannot overstress how little respect I have for no-name tyres – they're invariably lethal despite some tyre dealers claims that they're "just X rebranded as Y". Nonsense. And definitely don't get Doublestar trash if you ever see it. My car came with two doublestar tyres fitted up front, it was genuinely scary to drive. A set of Rainsports cured all of my problems and utterly transformed the car. The lowest budget I'd go to would be Federals, I've had the SS595s on my celica for a few years and find them to be fairly decent all-round and predictable, but when budget allows I'll be on rainsports for that too.

trail_rat – I tried the just drive slower thing, it didn't work for me with cheapo tyres. One of them began to disintigrate at 55 on the motorway despite initially showing no outward signs of failure. These are the same tyres that I found wouldnt stop me from 30 in a 60 with 200 yards to stop, and I ended up ditching it into a hedge to save the car in front.