Sportiva Tyres

Wheelnut

-Chris- wrote: »

Huh?

Sorry, misread the first post...

Wheelnut

Cyrus wrote: »

youd rather have conti sport contact 2s for a few quid more tho surely?

Well... err.... actually NO!

I have a 320d that came with Contact 2 Runflats as OE. Great on the motorway but horrible on a normal Irish road. They were hard and uncomfortable, I always seemed to have to fight with the steering, the front of the car would sometimes "float" sideways as it went over small bumps and there was literally a danger of it hopping off the road. (To add insult to injury, they had no traction in the recent snow either.) Then I tried a pair of budget Kumho runflats thinking I would not lose much if I had to get rid of them. It was amazing, the car was transformed and is now nice to drive.

I have no doubt that someone will do a test on a flooded racetrack and maybe find that Kumhos take 1.248 metres longer to stop under full-force braking, but until I find myself in that situation I am very happy that the car is now stable and goes where I point it.

Lower price does not always indicate a bad tyre. On the contrary it could be the case that a premium high performance tyre is not best suited to hacking in Irish conditions as I found out. The Sportiva is made in Europe so has to meet European manufacturing standards which puts them in a different league from the Chinese stuff. ....and finally, yes I have experience of one Sportiva tyre! My daughter ruined a tyre on her car a while back and the little garage she went to put on a single Sportivo. She put over 20k miles on the tyre and never got into trouble, so I think the OP will be OK with these tyres.

(now for the lecture about matching tyres from someone.)

Cyrus

Wheelnut wrote: »

Well... err.... actually NO!

I have a 320d that came with Contact 2 Runflats as OE. Great on the motorway but horrible on a normal Irish road. They were hard and uncomfortable, I always seemed to have to fight with the steering, the front of the car would sometimes "float" sideways as it went over small bumps and there was literally a danger of it hopping off the road. (To add insult to injury, they had no traction in the recent snow either.) Then I tried a pair of budget Kumho runflats thinking I would not lose much if I had to get rid of them. It was amazing, the car was transformed and is now nice to drive.

I have no doubt that someone will do a test on a flooded racetrack and maybe find that Kumhos take 1.248 metres longer to stop under full-force braking, but until I find myself in that situation I am very happy that the car is now stable and goes where I point it.

Lower price does not always indicate a bad tyre. On the contrary it could be the case that a premium high performance tyre is not best suited to hacking in Irish conditions as I found out. The Sportiva is made in Europe so has to meet European manufacturing standards which puts them in a different league from the Chinese stuff. ....and finally, yes I have experience of one Sportiva tyre! My daughter ruined a tyre on her car a while back and the little garage she went to put on a single Sportivo. She put over 20k miles on the tyre and never got into trouble, so I think the OP will be OK with these tyres.

(now for the lecture about matching tyres from someone.)

The tyres suggested by me originally are non runflats

i have no experience of Kuhmo run flats, but your experience with the conti run flats is similar to peoples experiences with runflats full stop, the sidewalls are very stiff which is what leads to the issues that you described,

hence bmw dont put them on M cars, and a lot of people with audis and bmw swap them out for non runflats.

secondly, summer or all weather tyres arent suited to the snow, no matter how good they are.

thirdly, maybe you dont care about how quickly you can stop in the wet, i do, plenty of times there is a downpour and the road is saturated.

im not going to bother on the mismatched tyres :pac: also you could have a car with 4 triangle tyres on and never get into any trouble if the gods smile down on you, doesnt make them ok

-Corkie-

Actually Nissan doctor while we are on the subject what are Altenzo tyres like.

Nissan doctor

-Corkie- wrote: »

Actually Nissan doctor while we are on the subject what are Altenzo tyres like.

I read somewhere that they are Chinese made but comissioned by some alloy wheel crowd in Australia or new zealand I think. Thats about as much as I know, I've never seen them here.

-Corkie-

Nissan doctor wrote: »

I read somewhere that they are Chinese made but comissioned by some alloy wheel crowd in Australia or new zealand I think. Thats about as much as I know, I've never seen them here.

They are the same price as Triangles (70 euro) so I was wondering were they the same quality..

EPM

Spend the extra ya miserable fceker:p

-Corkie-

EPM wrote: »

Spend the extra ya miserable fceker:p

True:D but I see you can get Vredstrein Sessantas for 128 euro including VAT and fitting of Alloywheels.ie and iirc you get a discount for being a vagdriver.net member. Thats 235/45/r17

Nissan doctor

There is one last point I want to make about the flood of cheap chinese tyres to hit the irish market since the downturn. The vast majority of them are not available in any other european country, strange, you might think that little Ireland gets all this choice when no-one else does. Untill you consider that Ireland is the only European country which has no body in place to regulate the importation and sale of tyres made outside the EU. The nct now checks for 'e' marks but there is no-one checking the certification of tyres before they are imported.

Also most chinese tyres didn't have 'e' marks untill the NCT included the requirement in their test, then immediatly, they all did.

People can draw their own conclusions on chinese brands from the above. I know I've driven cars with various brands fitted and when you have to completly change your driving style because of a brand of tyre fitted, you know there is something wrong.


A saying we coined in work lately, compare the quality of tyres a country produces to the quality of the cars it makes.

Continental, Michilen, pirelli etc are from europe as are VAG, merc , fiat etc etc etc

Bidgestone, Yokohama etc are from Japan, Nissan, toyota, honda and so on.

Kumho and Hankook are from Korea which has Hyundai and kia.

Triangle, fullrun, linlong, yellow sea and numerous other crazy names are from china.....now look up some chinese cars on youtube!

Wheelnut

Kumho and Hankook are now being fitted as OE by VW on some models and that was a consideration for me when I decided to take a chance on Kumho. I'm delighted with my choice.

I also recall that Hankooks are now also being made in Europe although I don't remember where.

Wheelnut

Wheelnut wrote: »

Kumho and Hankook are now being fitted as OE by VW .

Hankook were OE on a 2005 Mondeo I had years back.

Nissan doctor

Nissan doctor wrote: »

A saying we coined in work lately, compare the quality of tyres a country produces to the quality of the cars it makes.

Continental, Michilen, pirelli etc are from europe as are VAG, merc , fiat etc etc etc

Bidgestone, Yokohama etc are from Japan, Nissan, toyota, honda and so on.

Kumho and Hankook are from Korea which has Hyundai and kia.

Triangle, fullrun, linlong, yellow sea and numerous other crazy names are from china.....now look up some chinese cars on youtube!

Aren't some Michelin made in India though, Indian cars are utter sh1t. I'd disagree with the logic anyway. Lots of stuff sold in developed countries that folks reckon is made in developed countries is made in China and there is nothing wrong with it, no one will buy it if made in China is on it though. Companies just ship it to Ireland or wherever for the final processsing (quick quality check and clean and pack) and out if goes, made in Ireland or wherever their prestigious location is)

niallam

I had Continental premium contact on a car before and thought they were terrible. Have driven cars on most sorts of rubber though over the years.
Bought a car with nankang tires and changed all 4 2 days later for toyo's. My favourite tire was a bridgestone RE720 but when they were discontinued i went for toyo proxes from then on.
90% of people will never drive a car hard enough to notice any difference in tires and are happy driving on ditch finders.
I do think though for the extra few € try stay away from the chinese brands

Nissan doctor

RoverJames wrote: »

Aren't some Michelin made in India though, Indian cars are utter sh1t. I'd disagree with the logic anyway. Lots of stuff sold in developed countries that folks reckon is made in developed countries is made in China and there is nothing wrong with it, no one will buy it if made in China is on it though. Companies just ship it to Ireland or wherever for the final processsing (quick quality check and clean and pack) and out if goes, made in Ireland or wherever their prestigious location is)

Its not so much about where they are made, its where the manufacturer is from. Most tyre manufacturers have plants all over the world making tyres for different markets but they will all have the same standards of quality as they are controlled from the HQ.

VW have facilities in Germany, Spain, Czech republic, Brazil, USA etc
Nissan, have them in Japan, UK, Spain, France, USA

The cars we get in our market, as with the tyres, all come from a mix of plants around the world so IMO its not the plant that the tyre/car/TV/fridge or whatever you care to mention comes from, its the company it come from/is made for that dictates its quality.

patrickowens1

Hey Guys,

Cheers for all the replies and debate everyone. I definitely can see where Cyrus is coming from - why would someone buy a relatively unknown brand, with little available performance data when there are proven mid-range tyres from well known brands available for not a whole lot more....

I'm a student though, having left a job to go back to college, so if effin broke! The VREDESTEIN SPORTRAC 3's, for example, from camskill, will each work out closer to a hundred bucks by the time I get them on the car (shipping + fitting), which for me at the moment is a massive difference over the 60 per tyre for the Sportivas. So it's easy to say that I just don't care or understand the importance of fitting decent tyres, but while I definitely don't know a lot- I am an engineer with some amount of experience in skid resistance and road design, so i at least appreciate what's involved. What i'm looking for is a decent compromise, that's all....

I put real crap on last year - Sunny tyres i think they were, basically just putting literally the cheapest tyres i could find. I think they were €45 each. But they were noticeably crap, especially in the wet and I only got about 10k miles out of them. Waste of time.

Nissan Dr and Wheel-nut seem to be the only ones with actual 1st hand experience of Sportivas, and seem to give them an ok 'review' for their price. I think Advance tyres retail them at €85 and I've managed to get them at €60 so I'll prob get them fitted over the next few days.

In the meantime - if anyone has firsthand experience of Sportiva's or finds anymore data for them online, please share! Or if anyone finds alternatives in the 60-70 bob price bracket (fitted), let me know

Thanks again
Paddy.

patrickowens1

Hey Nissan Doctor, or anyone else - a guy I know in the tyre business offered me 4 x BF Goodrich for €300 and 4 x Michelins for €360, fitted and incl. tracking.

I can't quite stretch to the michelins, and I know that I don't have exact tyre specs, but as a general rule, do you think BF Goodrich would be worth the extra 15 bob a tyre?

Cheers

Cyrus

patrickowens1 wrote: »

Hey Nissan Doctor, or anyone else - a guy I know in the tyre business offered me 4 x BF Goodrich for €300 and 4 x Michelins for €360, fitted and incl. tracking.

I can't quite stretch to the michelins, and I know that I don't have exact tyre specs, but as a general rule, do you think BF Goodrich would be worth the extra 15 bob a tyre?

Cheers

did he give you a model?

Wheelnut

When you have a model check the reviews here: http://www.tyrereviews.co.uk/Tyre/BFGoodrich/