Traction. Safety. After sliding around in the rain on new Bridgestone Ecopia's, I don't feel its worth the risk to get .5 mpg out of a tire. I can't even imagine using a non winter LRR tire in a winter climate. I ordered SUMITOMO HTR A/S P02 tires for $55 each from tire rack, based on their extensive survey data which really sheds alot of light on what tire to buy based on the experiences of others. I have no doubt the extra traction will be will worth it. The sumitomo's also have a 51 mpg max, which I will start out with and taper it down to a reasonable level as necessary. So I believe that it just it may turn out that the LRR's had no benefit to begin with.
But there are tires with low rolling resistance and good wet traction. In Europe we have the tyre label on all tires. It gives rolling resistance and wet grip rating from A to G (A being the best) (label also tells you about the noise). Tires that have A for both the wet grip and rolling resistance are rare (maybe even nonexistent?) but B is very good rating still. You can easily find tires with B for rolling resistance and A for wet traction or A for rolling resistance and B for wet traction. I do have separate tires for winter that give super good traction on snow and even they have low rolling resistance with the rating B.
I've got the Ecopias and have driven my car in rainy conditions and have never experienced any loss of traction. Are you certain that the tires are at fault?
The Ecopias are crap. You have crappy tires, they perform crappily. I run Michelin X-ICE3 tires all year round on all my vehicles except the DeLorean. They perform awesome in the snow and ice as well as the rain and I still get excellent MPG.
Where I live, there is no high mileage during the winter. Cold and snow sees to that. Using winter tires does not really have much of an impact. Just change over twice a year.
my oems with 45,000 miles worked fine today in pouring rain, doing the speed limit and taking corners at a reasonable gait.
I get it. But the Michelins cost twice as much. I can get similar traction from the Sumitomo at half the price. I'm hoping that slightly overinflating will make up for the difference in mileage. We will see.
A few of us discussed LRR in another thread in the Gen 3 forum, I believe, the consensus is LRR is highly overrated. At any rate, have you considered the General Tire Altimax RT43? Right now, with a $50 rebate, they come about $20 cheaper than the Sumitomo. And the TireRack testing gives them awesome ranking. Final point they get mpg that rivals the LRR Continental TrueContact, yet, are not an LRR...
What does the LRR mean in the USA? Is it some test that tests rolling resistance and if you get lower than certain value you can call it low rolling resistance tire? Or is it just something that manufactures make up?
until sometime in 2017, when the gov. standards are issued, it's up to the mfg.'s. it still means a few mpg's in most cases though, there just aren't any standards.
Well if a manufacturer says some of his tires LRR, others aren't: it helps some. But yeah, from one manufacturer to another the definition can vary. And the range of LRR can be wide.
I've had the Altimax before with a promotion. I got a visa gift card for 50 or 100, I don't remember. They were good, but these sumitomo's had nearly the highest ratings on the site. The Altimax seemed to wear out quickly and the wet traction was not as good as another set of sumitomo tires that I had put on a camaro that was previously spinning the tires all the way through 3rd gear, and with the sumitomo it was hard to break traction in 1st gear. That is the result I'm hoping for.
About nine years ago, I had the original Altimax RT tires (without the 43 designation, which I have no idea what that means). They were pretty good tires, not fantastic, price was not bad at all. But the wear was an issue. This update -- RT43 -- supposedly addresses concerns from the earlier model. I've only had them about 45 days, so can't comment on anything other than they give a smooth ride and seem to have good dry traction and cornering. Also, not noisy. Time will tell. Hopefully will be at least as good as the Goodyear FuelMax LRR they replaced. As for mpg, I am getting exactly the same with the non-LRR RT43 as I did with the FuelMax and the other LRR tire before the FuelMax.
Thats what I was thinking. I don't remember as much detail about the original Altimax since its been along time, other than basically what you said, and they were a good value vs high dollar brands such as goodyear that don't always deliver for the price. It won't be easy for me to tell if the new tires are better or worse, mileage wise, because the seasonal temperature is dropping and I'm already getting better mileage due to less a/c use. But honestly I really don't even care about such a small difference, I'll take traction over mileage anyday.
The original Goodyear Eagles on the 05s were absolutely terrible-they lost traction on anything wet (snow was truly scary) and wore out under 30 miles. Altimaxes were better and wore out at 40K. The newest set are Gooydear Assurance Comfortread Touring--plan to get at least 60K. I shopped for quiet and smooth (LRR was only a small factor).
They were good. Don't recall how many miles I had on them when I sold the car. I occasionally did notice a big dip in mileage down to 35 or so, but I think it was only during extreme weather.
