cheap ditch finder tyre review...

[Goodj]

The difference is the mx5 struggled to stop as well as mine and robs

I learnt a lot about the limitations of my brakes that day

 

[Mr Burns]

After four CS road trips to the EVO Triangle it would appear that most people stay well within their tyres limits... I could've been in an Ignis with T1-R's and kept up easily.

Oh wait...

 

[alistairolsen]

@Mr Burns not really sure what argument you're trying to make, as you keep referencing brand name tyres from decent manufacturers whilst going on about budget tyres being ok?

Personally I wouldnt fit toyo T1-S or R as I'd always take rainsports for preference, but both are major brands and not at all comparable to the no-brand crap at the bottom of the market (of which I've tried a selection in various circumstances).

At the end of the day, in general its a saving of less than 20% and over 10-20k miles and IMHO it's worth that little extra to know you have a little grip left in reserve in case the worst happens.

The irony is that the same folk who will blare on about saving £50 on a set of tyres will then switch threads and expound on the virtues of running their car on super......

 

[Ex-User (19928)]

Well after 20 years of driving I've never had to stamp on the brakes, not to a point where cheap tyres would've caused me to crash. Maybe I've just never experienced really s**t tyres.

A couple of years ago I hit a dog that jumped out from a field through some shrubbery. There was literally no warning until he was mid air, with a landing zone of right in the middle of where my car was about to be.

I braked as hard as I could and, if I do say so myself, my reaction was right on point. I still hit the dog and it went under the front of my bumper, crushing its lung and it needed surgery. There was literally nothing I could have done to avoid that apart from going slower.

The car would only have had to travel another metre to drag the dog under the car and potentially the wheels- I had Pilot Sports on the car and I'm guessing if I'd had "ditch finders" then it'd have been a different, and much more messy story.

Anyway, stuff like that can happen to anyone. And for an extra few quid to make sure you have the best chance in any weather then there's no question IMO.

 

[Ex-User (19928)]

The irony is that the same folk who will blare on about saving £50 on a set of tyres will then switch threads and expound on the virtues of running their car on super......

My favourite one is when people will spend money on power modifications or suspension and brakes before using the highest performance tyres available...

 

[Ex-User (19928)]

I (briefly) had T1Rs on my Clio and they're a god awful tyre compared to Pilot Sports. Never tried Rainsports but I imagine it's the same for most people when they have a tyre they know works and you don't hear many people saying "that's dog s**t compared to X" then there's little incentive to change.

 

[Goodj]

It all comes down to how much of a pellet you want to be able to get away with driving like, really.

 

[alistairolsen]

It all comes down to how much of a pellet you want to be able to get away with driving like, really.

Not really, in fact almost entirely the opposite.

Whether you drive to 7/10 or 9/10 of the tyres grip limit on the road comes down to your assessment of the conditions, visibility and how much of an idiot you are and is a dynamic decision, made one corner at a time. It's a choice, you can choose to drive at 7/10 of the much lower performance of your budget tyres.
Whether 10/10 with the ABS locked in is enough in an emergency comes down to a static decision you made N months beforehand when you decided you wanted £50 to spend on something else. Whether you live to regret that is a gamble, of whether an emergency will occur in that 10-20k miles or not. Now sure, people will appear in a minute and say "dont tailgate" or "im a careful driver" but if a dog/deer/drunk driver/whatever crosses your path, all the risk aversion in the world wont affect the stopping distance of the car.

My favourite one is when people will spend money on power modifications or suspension and brakes before using the highest performance tyres available...

Or bushes/balljoints/basic maintenance, but that's a story for another day.

 

[Goodj]

Not really, in fact almost entirely the opposite.

Whether you drive to 7/10 or 9/10 of the tyres grip limit on the road comes down to your assessment of the conditions, visibility and how much of an idiot you are and is a dynamic decision, made one corner at a time. It's a choice, you can choose to drive at 7/10 of the much lower performance of your budget tyres.
Whether 10/10 with the ABS locked in is enough in an emergency comes down to a static decision you made N months beforehand when you decided you wanted £50 to spend on something else. Whether you live to regret that is a gamble, of whether an emergency will occur in that 10-20k miles or not. Now sure, people will appear in a minute and say "dont tailgate" or "im a careful driver" but if a dog/deer/drunk driver/whatever crosses your path, all the risk aversion in the world wont affect the stopping distance of the car.

I had a muntjac jump out in front of my old Toledo at point-blank range (about a decade ago), and warm Eagle F1's didn't save me from needing a new bumper and sump.

But are you suggesting that people are not more likely to drive "to the limits of the tyre" after they've poured £150 a corner into cut slicks for their Clio, moving from some Uniroyals?

 

[R3k1355]

You can't plan emergency braking.

And you can definitely 'test' the capabilities of a s**t tyre on the road.

This 100%. I always used to run s**t tyres on my daily, I stuck to speed limits and drove sensible so whats the point right??

Until some total shitstain cut me up real bad in the wet one day, slammed on the anchors only to find absolutely f**k-all happened, tyre scream and brown trousers.
Luckily I bumped up a kerb and ended up sorta sideways next to them at the lights, we were only doing 30ish mph but still that was too much to ask of my tyres in an emergency.

 

[alistairolsen]

I had a muntjac jump out in front of my old Toledo at point-blank range (about a decade ago), and warm Eagle F1's didn't save me from needing a new bumper and sump.

But are you suggesting that people are not more likely to drive "to the limits of the tyre" after they've poured £150 a corner into cut slicks for their Clio, moving from some Uniroyals?

I haven't commented, as thats not what we're talking about (and running cut slicks on the road is moronic un the UK, where just occasionally it rains, unpredictably).
All I'm saying is that uniroyal rainsports are ~£140 a set plus fitting in 15, so fitting some Wanli fuel savers to save £8 a corner is just mental.

The original post was about these https://www.tyreleader.co.uk/car-tyres/three-a/p606/ which are Chinese tyres made by the Shengtai Corp. The wet grip performance labels are a bit of a nonsense really as theyre not independently tested. Now since no one bothers independently testing s**t tyres, let's take a proper independant test of some brand name tyres:
http://www.autoexpress.co.uk/access...r-tyres-test-20162017-best-tyre-brands-and-uk
The tests are explained above and the tabular results are below:
http://www.autoexpress.co.uk/access...ter-tyre-reviews-20162017-results-by-category
If I were to take just a single result, there is an 18% increase in wet stopping distance between the best and worst, or 7m extra from 80km/h.

Lets take the equivalent summer test:
http://www.autoexpress.co.uk/accessories-tyres/91870/tyre-test-2016-results-by-category
Dry braking there is a 5% margin in performance. Under wet braking there is 11% and thats among a group of brand name, decent tyres.

The single biggest thing I've ever noticed about ditchfinders is the massive drop off from dry to wet performance. Plenty of these tyres appear for one year as the best MSA road legal tyre because they're soft and the dry performance is good, but the drop in performance in the wet due to poor tread and compound design is huge.

 

[Mr Burns]

I guess I'm just trolling a little, but to me something like a Toyo T1-R is a crap budget tyre. Having said that they're fine for spirited road driving.
My sarcasm was aimed at folk who feel like they need Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2's to drive at 60mph through the Welsh valleys. I think driving a well maintained car and reading the road ahead of you is far more important.

 

[alistairolsen]

I guess I'm just trolling a little, but to me something like a Toyo T1-R is a crap budget tyre. Having said that they're fine for spirited road driving.
My sarcasm was aimed at folk who feel like they need Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2's to drive at 60mph through the Welsh valleys. I think driving a well maintained car and reading the road ahead of you is far more important.

Totally agree with you then, but there is a huge gulf in performance between budget big brand tyres and unbranded ditchfinders. I'm happy running rainsports, or goodyear eagles, or my continental winters, without feeling the need to buy sportcontact 5s or pilot sport cups, but that is a whole different world to Seat Spiders, or Wanli Fuelsavers, or AAA
At the end of the day its a law of diminishing returns and spending twice as much money to gain 2% dry grip is just as mental as sacraficing 50% of your wet grip to save £8
I think you probably summed it up when you said "maybe I just haven't experienced proper s**t tyres"

 

[Mr Burns]

Totally agree with you.
At the end of the day its a law of diminishing returns and spending twice as much money to gain 2% dry grip is just as mental as sacraficing 50% of your wet grip to save £8
I think you probably summed it up when you said "maybe I just haven't experienced proper s**t tyres"

I think T1-R's are the worst I've had, and there are people on here still waxing lyrical about them.
I even had a mate running them on his caged-up track toy.

 

[alistairolsen]

They were one of those tyres that hit the market and 18 year old kids saw them on forums and bought a set, normally with new wheels, but certainly as the first 'new' tyres on the car and then posted going "ZOMG these are AMAZING" causing others to do the same.

Compared to other tyres available, they're awful, but they were a marked improvement from a set of 185/60 14 michelin ecos with 2mm of tread left and when you've only experienced two tyre types on a single car, of course you think they're great

People do the same with polybushes, fit them and declare they are the best thing ever, but they compare them to 110k old OEM bushes, not new ones.

 

[Mr Burns]

I was under the assumption that the original T1-R's from back in the day were made in another factor in a different country to where they're made now, and the current tyres are inferior. Not saying that they were ever that good.

 

[alistairolsen]

No idea, I discovered early on that I much preferred rainsports and from them to goodyear eagle assy 2/3 (didnt like the GSD3) and never looked at the Toyos again, but they were inferior to their contemperary performance summer tyres even then

 

[Goodj]

I was under the assumption that the original T1-R's from back in the day were made in another factor in a different country to where they're made now, and the current tyres are inferior. Not saying that they were ever that good.

T1-R's appear to have cotton wool sidewalls... even on the Mazda they just.......just no.
I wouldn't say they're 40000% budget mind, but absolutely they aren't a set of Pzero Nero

 

[Ex-User (19928)]

I guess I'm just trolling a little, but to me something like a Toyo T1-R is a crap budget tyre. Having said that they're fine for spirited road driving.
My sarcasm was aimed at folk who feel like they need Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2's to drive at 60mph through the Welsh valleys. I think driving a well maintained car and reading the road ahead of you is far more important.

T1Rs are s**t. You're right about that much.

"Well maintained" includes non-s**t tyres just as much as it includes scheduled servicing.

 

[mitch1503]

No body roll doesn't mean a car handles good. If anything, on a road car, it will have lower limits.

NO but it handles just aswel if not better than a 172, obvioysly not as fast but the lil jap things handle

 

[Transporter T4]

Good life insurance policy for the Mrs, ditch finders.........I love it when a plan comes together......

 

[STEVE.M]

[QUOTE="alistairolsen, post: 11291216, member: 103323"The wet grip performance labels are a bit of a nonsense really as theyre not independently tested. Now since no one bothers independently testing s**t tyres.[/QUOTE]
http://www.blackcircles.com/general/tyre-labelling/tyre-testing
So are you saying that budget brands fake their results, and that they print what they want?
If so why fake an E?
https://www.camskill.co.uk/m62b0s344p123740/Landsail_Tyres_Car_Landsail_LS288_Landsail_LS_288_-_205_45_R16_87W_XL_TL_Fuel_Eff_:_C_Wet_Grip:_E_NoiseClass:_2_Noise:_70dB
And Toyo T1R`s are E too.
I would like to see the budgets tested against the name brands in the independent tests, but some threw their toys out the pram when some Linglong UHP tested better than some name brands a few years ago.
So that `s not going to happen again.

 

[alistairolsen]

Not quite, but I'm also not saying that two tyres which score an A in wet grip necessarily have the same performance, or that a tyre with an A is reliably 'better' than a tyre with a B.

You see some brands moving up occasionally, a few years ago nankang would have fallen into the ditchfinder category and now they make some good stuff, likewise hankook and Kumho.

I too would love to see proper independant testing and the introduction of minimum performance standards, as a lot of these tyres arent fit for purpose IMHO. The R90 legislation demands that brake pads are within 10% of the performance of the OEM pad and yet nothing actually forces the tyres (the limiting factor) to perform to the same standard.

 

[R3k1355]

A proper big independent test would be great, I bet there's a couple of the cheap ditchfinders that are actually decent.

It might shock some people how big the difference between the budget and the top of the market is.

 

[Mr Plums]

A proper big independent test would be great, I bet there's a couple of the cheap ditchfinders that are actually decent.

It might shock some people how big the difference between the budget and the top of the market is.

 

[imprezaworks]

Remember watching that lol

 

[JB21]

Just took the plunge on these tyres Three A P606 XL in 225/40/18. Only paid £72 for 2 delivered next day.

Will give my honest verdict once fitted and given a fair few miles driven in both the wet and dry, they're a new tyre on the market but get decent reviews so far....we'll soon see.

They'll be replacing RS3s which I now wouldn't buy again as they've only lasted 10k and the majority of that was motorway with my average speed of a whopping 25mph.

 

[montana]

I ran some old budgets all round on my 197 at Blyton last year (reason: i didnt want to wreck my good tyres 2 weeks before going to the ring) (however i am no racing driver).

Used Nankang NS2's / Nexen N8000 which i rate for budget tyres. Despite what the gentry on CS say, they will not fling you into the first/nearest ditch and are perfectly fine (providing you drive reponsibly and know your cars/your limits of course).

 

[BoatNonce]

I've used the Nexen N2000 and they were better than T1Rs, lol!

 

[bloke]

I've used the Nexen N2000 and they were better than T1Rs, lol!

i've got slippers that would be better than the t1r!!