Tire-wise: Good deals on 16" lately?

[JimBee]

The other variable that I'm interested in is noise factor. Any comments on that for above posts appreciated.

[scot850]

Personally I like Toyo summer/all season tires and Gislaved/Nokian winters. Currently I have General Himalaya winter tires (forgotten model) and they are reasonably quiet even at the above average temperatures we have. Can usually say the other 2 brands are similar for winters. Toyo summers I found fairly quiet and reasonably priced.

I am now considering changing to a set of Nokian ALL Weather tires on my 2000 R. With 4 vehicles and not a lot of mileage being racked up (my car has never achieved 3000km/year in the 3.5 years I've owned it), and as I don't drive like a crazy person, they may be a reasonable compromise to allowing only 1 set off wheels/tires to be needed and reduce storage and in particular wear and tear on me!! I need to consider a tire change as one of the tires is worn on the out-side edge when the PO had an alignment issue.

We have a huge temperature swing here and 'All-season' are now being re-named '3-season' up here.

Neil.

[abscate]

At 3000 km per year I would just leave the snows on year round

You could end up throwing out tires on time rather than mile life, which sould really suck

[MadeInJapan]

I give the General Tires a second vote on this thread. I know they changed the Altimax tread pattern but they were rated highly and the price was very good! I've on the second set on my S70 because they treated me right first go round. On Tirerack you can click on the type of tire you're buying and see all of the other tires that they sell in the same class and how they stack up against each other. After that, I tried to search the tires that were in my price range and decent ratings to see what cars they were successful on. That's how I came to my conclusion. If I recall, the Altimax was actually rated a Grand Touring (all season) tire but the aggressive tread made them appear similar to a performance tire. I was not disappointed. To me, it was long life, good grip in the rain as well as lower road noise that made a difference. Sure, you could go with Michelin and pay a ton more. I believe that General is actually made by Continental but I could be wrong here.

[PeteB]

I did research about 5 years ago with emphasis on balanced, wet performance
and tread life. Chose the General Altimax RT43 and first put them on our old
Mazda 626, then on my 2011 Sonata, and on the front on the Volvo.
I've put 40,000 on them on the Sonata and am just now thinking that I need to
check them, or at least rotate them. We don't use the Mazda enough to have
any treadlife estimate and the Volvo odometer has been broken.
They did completely change the tread pattern from when I did the research to
when I put them on the Sonata.

We use Town Fair tire that is, I think, a CT or North East business and they will
match price with Tire Rack with shipping but you have to find a good one
with good techs. They aligned the Volvo and so far wear has been very low,
it was way out and it destroyed the last pair of almost new tires. I twisted their
arm for the first set of four and they only charged me the Tire Rack price
without shipping. Next time they insisted, then when I pointed it out on 2 more
for the Volvo they did not add on the shipping charge.

I would review test reports if anyone is interested in these since the tread has
changed since I did the research.

I had the tires on my 2011 Sonata checked today. They were put on at 39K miles
I waited until 63K (24K miles) to rotate them, it is now 83K miles (44K from new)
and they tell me that the rears have 50% left and the fronts 70%. I think it was a
bit out of alignment at the 63K so that might account for more wear for the first
24K miles. Very pleased with having so much tread left at 44K miles.