Face it -- Tons of threads asking for the best tire. And, seriously, tires nowadays, versus the ones I grew up with in the 1960s and '70's are far superior than those chunks of rubber. Most tires, for most people, do an average, get along sort of job. And, as seen in many threads there are some very good tires that rise above average. But, what tires should be avoided. I mean not everyone wants or is able to put out the cash for a Michelin or a Conti. Is a Barnum from Discount Tire good enough? So, my contribution, is the Goodyear Integrity that originally came with the Prius from the dealership when I bought it "just off the boat from Japan." It got a whopping 25,000 miles, have issues with traction in any sort of weather. By far, one of worst.
Toyo tires that came stock on the 17" wheels.......those are horribly loud and I'm about to throw them out.
Sounds like your Integrities were underinflated. (If you were running recommended pressures then they were definitely underinflated.) I was still on the OEM tires when the 2006 was totaled. There are so many off brand names with low tread life ratings that aren't low rolling resistance that finding the worst is going to be tough. Anyone basing a tire purchase solely on the lowest price isn't going to care about any performance metric.
I am not sure if there were (are) different "generations" or "subsets" of those tires. The ones on my Prius hydroplaned in the Seattle weather at the drop of a sprinkle. They were worthless on snow -- lucky we seldom have any. They would take any excuse to lose traction and they wore out quickly. But, I know one guy who actually bought them from a Goodyear dealer, and he swears they are pretty good -- not wonderful, but pretty good. He also got a very good price on them. So, with both you and him, I wonder if they made some production changes somewhere. Or, I guess, like anything, I might have received a set of lemons.... As for running them underinflated, I run the Prius tires at the exact Toyota spec. Two reasons, I don't get any better mpg to speak of bumping them up to the 42/40, and the ride is very harsh, which is hard on me, and, I don't imagine a lot of vibration is good for the car. The harshness goes away at the recommended psi (mostly). And, yes, I do keep them aligned and balanced.
Slightly off topic, but on one of our non-pri cars, the tread is getting pretty slick. But since it is "summer now" and we won't get a drop of rain until September, I am holding off buying a new set, wife is a little upset, but, hey, there's a reason they run slicks on dragsters!
I have Barum tires on my Prius, as it came with them when I bought it last summer. Here are the specs. Barum-online.com Bravuris 195/60R15 88H Tread wear 400, Traction A, Temperature A They wear well, They had good tread on them but I rotated soon after I got the car since I saw some wear on the fronts. I put 18,691 miles on them so far and they look good. 161911 miles on the Prius. The mileage is good with these tires, averaging 52 mpg highway. 42/40 psi F/R The 60 mph speed is 2 mph fast,(58 mph actual) and 70 mph is close to 3 mph (67 mph actual) fast compared to my GPS. The revs/mile is 832.96 per Discount Tire. I know that the local Prius dealer ( MyToyota in Muskegon,MI) has them in stock but I haven't priced them yet. $67.00 at Discount Tire online price.
MY best set of tires were the Firestone tires that came on my new 2000 Chevy Venture van. @ 121,000 miles I decided to see just how far I could go. At 147,800 miles the left front tire let go and I had to get new tires. I opted for Goodyear Integrity tires. I think I got about 50,000 miles on them before they wore out. The Firestone's were definitely the best tires for that van.
I've heard rumors that the tires you get on a new car are not identical to the same brand and model of replacement tire. This sort of makes sense. When Toyota (or GM, Ford, etc.) are buying tires for 100,000+ cars, they have a lot of leverage to get changes made to the tire. Perhaps a slightly different compound to save $10 a car. I don't really know, only that when a big customer wants a non-standard product, they usually get it. At least that's how things work in my day job. I can say for certain that the same tire in different sizes can be vastly different. We used to have both a Cavalier and a Mazda3, both of which came with the same model of Goodyear tire. The Chevy had 205/55R16s which were fantastic in the snow, and still had usuable tread when one got taken out by highway debris at 70k+ miles. The Mazda had 205/50R17s that were awful in snow, and the tires were bald by 40k miles. The tread patterns were vastly different. Same brand and model of tire. I'm at 17k miles on the Prius, and the original Goodyears still look new.
integritys are very close to the worst tires ever. but the dragon lady had dunflops on her corolla and they were terrible too. one by one they all ended up making a lot of noise like a flat spot or a bad belt. that's why they call em dunflops: flopflopflopflop all the time at any speed. I would never even consider any tire made in china or korea, so I have no experience on how bad they are...
I ran the factory Integrity at 40/38 and 38/36. Managed to get 60mpg on one tank and 59mpg on another. They were crap in the rain. I've seen Dodge Caravans and 300s (not the C) with Goodyear Integrity. Can't imagine driving those cars with that tire!
I used to buy tires at one of the big box retailers . Figuring that it was the same tire just priced lower. . My mechanic pointed out the 'fine print' specs on my same name as widely advertised, but big box sourced tires. I was surprised. The big box tire had the same brand, model name and size, but the specs were lower than advertised by the tire's manufacturer. . . . The mechanic says he's seen the same on appliances and electronics things. Compare the detail specs, not the model names. Consumer reports did a story on Black Friday specials that highlighted the not readily apparent differences.
