Buying new tires, need guidance

Hi Edwin:
Welcome to the site.

Lots of good input so far to give you ideas. Here’s my approach for tires.

When I consider the importance of winter traction, if my lifestyle has the requirement to drive in snow regardless of the roads being plowed or not, then I seriously consider a separate set of winter tires. That usually means the cost of extra rims, and a place in the house to store them. But it will give you the best winter traction.

If it’s more likely that I can wait for roads to be plowed, then I look for a good all-season tire. Not all all-season tires are created equal. Though as others have noted, most are “good enough”.

I then look at tire ratings on Tire Rack to narrow down my choices, to compare characteristics like wet traction, winter traction, tread life, noise, etc.

Last is choosing where to buy the tire. Getting it from Tire Rack works for many, as do the big tire chain stores. I’ve found the best service and prices from the local independent tire shops.

It’s easy to get carried away trying to find the perfect tire. There are lots of great tires out there.

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Thanks everyone for the feedback and guidance. I really appreciate it. This helps.

It wouldn’t surprise me if all decent tires work well for most people. I used to look at ads from a local discount tire shop in the Penny Waster, astonished to see super cheap tires, like $19 for a 195/R14, until I noticed the mileage ratings, around 100. Not only will those not last, they’re more likely to fail. I bought the best Goodrich with a rating of 540.

I’ve tried different brands to save some money in the past but years ago I settled on Goodyear (also use General) for a lower cost per mile compared to a cheaper tire. Of course I had 15" wheels but I would get 110,000 miles on a set of Goodyears, with the casing still intact. Some of the cheaper tires I’d be lucky to get 70,000 with the tread still OK but the casings failing. But you have to take customer reviews with a grain of salt due to their driving style, vehicle, conditions, expectations. Um, the only thing is I would not trust Walmart. Just in my view over a million and a half miles or so.

Many years ago, when I knew that I would be trading-in my car in just a few months, I bought cheap-o “Falls” brand tires that were sold by a local tire shop. The first thing that I noticed was that they squealed like a stuck pig on turns when I wasn’t even going fast. Then, when I encountered the first rain storm after buying those cheap tires, I quickly learned that they had extremely poor wet traction.

Never again for cheap-o tires!

Here is a guide that Car Talk recently created to help shoppers of tires in need of a place to start.

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Consult the Consumer Reports reviews, they’re the only ones I know of that are based on independent testing. Most other info and reviews are either ad copy, user reviews that might be first impressions, or from tire salespeople who either are repeating ad copy or might be pushing their higher mark up products (an occasional one might know their stuff).

The term “All Season” doesn’t mean much as their winter performance varies widely - some simply have almost zero grip on snow and ice where-as others are quite good. We’ve been using Michelins, mostly “All Season” models, for 5 decades w/o a single fail other than to road hazards. A family member in the rubber compounding business claims Michelin has a reputation in the industry for using the highest quality ingredients, and it shows as some of ours have held up for over 8 yrs with little or no sidewall crazing while parked out of doors while other All Seasons were crazing at the sidewalls and between treads in 2-3 years, and some have survived intense pothole and curb encounters. Tread wear on RWD Volvos and several FWD cars exceeded warranty and they’re currently doing well on an Outback (second set). A set of Pirellis on the Outback handled quite well, including in snow, but wore out at about half the warranty. Relatives in Maine with a fleet of Subarus run Continental all seasons throughout winter and are quite satisfied…

Those who have real winters should consider Winter tires just for that season, but still should check the CR reviews as performance varies.

Discount Tire (America’s Tire in CA) have been excellent for us. Costco’s prices and warranty are good, but the local shop damaged the manual jack points on two of our cars with improper lifting. I had a good experience with Tire Rack delivering to an independent BMW service for mounting (our E30 series is too easily damaged to trust to a normal shop), but Tire Racks reviews don’t appear to be based on independent testing.

Tire Rack does independent performance tests which I trust.

A little while ago, I would have agreed with you. But the last set of tires I bought were for my truck, Cooper tires at Walmart, I was impressed by how well the Walmart tire employees did. They torqued the wheels making sure the torque wrench was moving when it clicked, double checked the torque in the stall and then took the truck out on the parking lot and did two figure 8’s and rechecked the torque again.

A couple of weeks later, one wheel was destroyed in a minor accident, they honored the warranty and provided a new tire. I had to get a full set of new wheels because I could not get a replacement for the one damaged (not repairable either). The remounted all the other tired on the new wheels for just the mounting fee, the lifetime balance carried over from the initial purchase.

The local Walmart here may be an outlier though when it comes to tire service. I have had very bad experiences with Sam’s club though, two different Sam’s Club’s. Again, they could be outliers or Sam’s Club may have upgraded their tire tech training since them. It has been over 20 years since I last used them.

Don’t rule out a dealership. A couple of years ago, I needed 2 tires for my Ram. The dealer offered a competitive price, plus they washed the truck.

Yes, many dealerships have seen the light, and have reduced their tire prices to competitive levels.
Even batteries tend to be competitively priced at dealerships nowadays, or at least they are at the local Toyota dealership.

You must have special dealers. Last time I needed tires for my Highlander- I just happened to receive a flyer from my dealer. So I called…their prices were more then double for the same tire from a tire shop I deal with that’s less then 5 miles from the dealer. I’d hate to see what their non sale price was.

I almost used the dealer last month, but discount tire was just a bit cheaper. Close, though.

The service at Walmart may vary depending on where you are but just sayin’ the national brand tire at Walmart may not be the same quality that you would get at a regular tire store. Like computers and TVs where the model numbers and parts don’t match, the tire models may also be exclusive to Walmart. Just something to keep in mind. Yeah and Sams is Walmart. They may have changed though in the last few years, dunno.

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I know there are tires from manufacturers that are made for WalMart and the discount warehouses…but I’m not sure they are lesser quality. Maybe /Maybe-not. According to Michelin’s web-site the tires are the same quality.

I believe that Bing is correct about the brand-name tires sold at Walmart being of a lower-grade.
In regard to Michelin, I spoke with a guy at Michelin’s corporate level, and he stated that the Michelins sold at Costco are exactly the same as the ones sold at indy tire shops.

It would not surprise me if Walmart’s tires are the same as those sold at other retailers. Walmart makes out by buying huge quantities and then selling to us for less. They split the savings between themselves and the customer. I’ve never bought Walmart tires, but I did buy several sets of name brand Sam’s Club tires. I imagine they are the same, and I never noticed a difference in life or performance from other retailer’s products.

Some years ago I finally gave up with all the shopping and reading and decided to go to Costco for tires. Maybe it’s just fatigue, because I’m tired of trying to read up and get information from random reviews on the internet, puff pieces from sources that make money somehow, just a waterfall of blah, blah, blah. So far Costco hasn’t been tricky or evasive or less that straightforward with me, and they keep records for warranty claims, and now they make reservations, so that’s it. A couple of choices and so far I have not felt the service writer had any financial interest in steering me one way or the other.

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I couldn’t agree more. Got a trusted source? Just use it and forget the blah blah blah. I feel the same way about shopping for cars. I just wish they would quit messing around with turbos trying to squeeze and extra 1 or 2 mpg out of it.

The use of turbos on small displacement engines is another sign of the eventual end of internal combustion as the power for cars. Patches on patches on patches - time for a fresh start.

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