Uncovering the Truths About Tires
When you’re buying tires you need to know the basics about what fits. Then, you need to uncover the real truths about the tire’s performance.
Let’s start with the basics of fitment. A tire fits if:
1. It’s the proper size.
2. It has an adequate speed rating/load rating.
3. It’s in the appropriate performance category.
It’s relatively easy to cover all those bases. You can match the tires currently on your vehicle and double check the recommendations in your vehicle’s owner’s manual. You might want some advice when it comes to picking the appropriate performance category if you’ve noticed your Original Equipment or currently installed tires fall short in some areas.
This is when you need to hear those real truths about a tire that we mentioned earlier. No one wants to have their tires installed and then discover that they’re noisy, wear rapidly and are disappointing on wet roads.
The Spies head to The Tire Rack to get this important info from a number of different angles:
Independent, on-site tire test results
Consumer survey results tallying one billion miles driven on over 500 different tire models
Highly trained sales specialists with expert-level advice
Whether you research and buy online or prefer to talk one-on-one with sales specialists you can get the whole story about a tire. Tire tests performed under closely monitored wet and dry (even snowy or icy) conditions reveal much about a tire’s ride, noise and handling qualities. They’ll share their test results with you.
But what we like best are the unbiased consumer reviews in their survey results. Just imagine hearing this before you’ve paid the big bucks for your tires:
“Shoddy…decent at first, but after a few road trips they seemed to have developed a grudge against me. The front ones cupped really bad and made my truck sound like a vehicle off of Star Wars. The rear ones wore down badly right down the middle to where there is no tread left (and they were properly inflated). Forget about water traction. My truck gets sideways with any sort of acceleration with these tires. If you want to live dangerously and have an odd sounding vehicle (with) awful traction off-road and in the mud, get these. But if you want to drive safely, have the chicks stop laughing at the noises coming from your wheel wells, and go somewhere off road: DO NOT BUY THESE!!!”
Or how reassuring -- even exciting -- comments like this can be:
“These are the best tires…I’ve ever had. Dry and wet weather traction is great. Flex is minimal and slip under hard cornering is slight, linear, and predictable. I find myself taking corners as fast in the Grand Cherokee as I do in the Corvette…They easily handled an Iowa winter, several years of Washington, D.C. commuting and all the trailer weight I could possibly throw at them…These tires could outlast many cars – 55,000 miles and there’s still life left in them.”
If you’re in the market for new tires, don’t make a move without getting The Tire Rack involved. Rely on them for the right tires, the right fit and nothing but the truth about those tires.