Anybody have experience with these tires or Kelly tires in general? I don’t need a high performance tire, looking for good quality tire with reasonable rain and snow traction for an 03 Taurus. Model is fairly new, not much on the internet.
Thanks,
Ed B.
My recommendation is to visit www.tirerack.com and www1010tires.com and look at their consumer feedback sections. They’re a great source of tire information.
Unfortunately neither one stocks Kelly tires, but thank you for the suggestion.
Ed B.
Kelly tires are a bottom feeder tire brand. I haven’t seen any for sale in 20 years. I thought they were out of business.
Why even consider a Kelly? There are lots of low price tires out there. Some are pretty decent tires - Nexxen for one.
IIRC, Goodyear brands their bottom-of-the-barrel tires as Kelly tires. As was already stated, none of the major tire retailers on the internet sells Kelly tires…perhaps with good reason…
Many decades ago I had a set of Kellys on a Plymouth Roadrunner and they were great tires.
About 10 years ago I had a set of Kelly tires on my Lincoln and they were the worst tires I’ve ever seen in my life.
They held balance and were quiet running…
BUT; they would cause you to have a white knuckle grip on the wheel with wet pavement.
The car would slide all over the roadway on wet pavement and when there was any pooled water; forget it.
I’ve often driven at 45 MPH (the minimum) on the turnpike when it was wet. Even then it was heart in the throat and both hands on the wheel. And I’m a very unflappable guy.
That turned me off Kellys for good. Since then I’ve run pretty much Bridgestone all the time.
Thanks for the good advice, I will not be buying Kelly tires any time soon.
Ed B.
Tire Rack has tire tests in addition to owner feedback. I use both to buy tires, and put more emphasis on the comparison tests. Pick a category you like, such as standard all season radials, and see if there are any tests for the tires that rank highly in the owner feedback list.
I agree with those who’ve recommended Tirerack as an info source and possibly a place to buy tires. I have been happy with them over the years for info and have sometimes purchased tires from them.
I also recommend Consumer Reports. Their November issue always has tire test results, which are also in their annual Buying Guide book.
Most recently I brought General AltimaxRT43 tires from a trusted local garage. They are rated highly by CR, especially for snow traction, which is important to me. Tirerack has a tire buying decision questionnaire, which suggested these tires. And the local guys’ mounted and balanced price was lower than if I’d had them shipped from Tirerack.
I purchased 4 Kelly Edge A/S tires four months ago. One by one, they have all gone flat, the first flat only two days afer they were installed. It was a huge tear in the tread surface. Yesterday the same thing occurred on one of my front tires. I can’t remember my last flat prior to driving on these tires–to average one per month seems beyond coincidental. I am shopping today for new tires with only 5000 mile on these Kelly tires.
Did you get these at a garage?
The date of manufacture will be molded into the sidewall. See the attached link to interpret. In many shops tires can spend years on the rack before they’re installed. Yours may be many years old.
Being a suspicious type I’ve long believed that the tire industry has established a code that needs to be researched so that consumers cannot tell when their tires were manufactured without looking it up… and most people don’t even know they can.
Thanks for the info. Since my corner garage guys were distinctly defensive and unfriendly when I attempted to have a conversation about the tires I crossed them off my list and moved in. The offending tires were replaced and disposed of 1/2 hour ago.
Regards,
Bill
Many years ago I calculated what the odds were that there would be a guy who had 4 flats in a year - with the assumption that punctures are purely random events. I just looked it up and what I got was 0.21%. Even if I grossly overestimated the rate, that’s a lot higher then most folks would think.
I think we just encountered one of those statistical anomalies.