Tyres-Insignia, how long?

Bpmull wrote: »

Continentals have to be one of the worst wearing mid range tyres on the road there beyond bad when it comes to wear.

Firstly, Continental is a premium brand, not a mid range tyre.

Secondly, I got over 80,000km from a set of Conti Premium Contacts on my old Accord. Went on at 94,402km, got rotated front to back (and re-balanced) around 115,000km, and got through the NCT before I traded the car (failed NCT on Headlight alignment, passed on everything else), with somewhere around 180,000km on.

That's what I call good mileage from a set of tyres.

I got about 65k out of my Conti tyres on my Insignia SRi. I guess it's down to how you drive them. I changed them before the NCT. Our mechanic advised changing them, but said they would still have passed. They were just getting close to the limit.

vectra wrote: »

I only got 19k kms out of the front bridgestones on my last vrs.
This one has Contis same as yours and my local fitter tells me they are one of the most over rated tyres out there.

Try a set of Hankooks. They should last much longer.

The original front Hankooks are gone in my VW Caddy after 29K.

That's only 19k miles. I never remember replacing tyres that soon on my older vehicles.

road_high wrote: »

I really know I am asking how long is a piece of string but I have an Insignia brand new just since last sept 2012. 24.5 thousand KMs on her since then. It's the SRI 160 bhp model so reasonably quick off the mark..and front heavy too. It's just the tyres 245 Continentals are very worn already on the front! Will need replacing to my eye. Just wondering what would people think is "normal" wear for one of these? I appreciate so many factors like driving style, road conditions etc come into play.
Driving a real mix of m-ways, N roads and country roads. Fairly heavy right foot but I 'd never be playing acting like taking off skidding, breaking hard etc...am surprised I didn't get longer out of them.

Tyre wear varies a lot case by case.
It depends on car weight, but not as much as people thing, as usually the heavier the car, the wider and bigger the wheels, so more rubber to wear. Obviously that's not always the rule, but general tendency.

IMO most important factors to tyre wear are as follows.
1. Type of road you are driving - you will get much more miles off the tyre on straight roads than bendy roads. Motorways are probably the best for low tyre wear, while bendy country roads in mountain regions are the worst. The more bends you have to drive through, the more tyre wear, especially the front.
2. Driving style - Someone driving very gently, never accelerating hard and never breaking hard, proceeding through bends at low speed, will get much more from tyres, than someone driving as fast as possble.
3. Surface type - this is especially important in Ireland, as most roads in West of the country are covered in chippings attached to surface, and because of that are very rough. Generally roads in Ireland are very tyre-wearing. I haven't really seen any of the smooth surface roads like you find nearly anywhere on the continent.
4. Correct tyre pressure and wheel alignment - Any of those out of standard, will cause excessive tyre wear.
5. Tyre itself - some brands wear much quicker than others. Some come with plenty of thread, some with very little. I've seen new tyres with 9mm tread, as well as ones with 6mm tread. That makes huge difference (nearly double).

In general, on my cars, front tyres last less than 10k kilometres.
But that's a mixture of nearly all worst cases from above. I'm driving mostly on very bendy mountain roads, usually very fast, on roads so rough that if you tried walking barefoot on them, you would get hurt. I always have right tyre pressure and correct wheel alignment, but it's not much of a help considering facts above.

As opposition, my father managed to do about 80k kilometres on set of tyres during 10 years, and front ones maybe went down from 7mm to 4mm.
But he is driving very slowly and gently, mostly on straight roads with smooth type of surface (in Poland).

Our Insignia has 132,000km on and has just had a set of new tyres. 6 tyres previously replaced (full set and then 2 more)
I would have said they are pretty good on tyres, given the low profile 245/55/ I think is the size. My brother has an E200 estate and rear tyres were completely bald at 9k miles!!