OK for shits and giggles we will pretend that my qualifications are inferior to yours. (They probably aren’t*, but hey I will humor you) (Aw hell while we are at it we can pretend that I am an 18 year old nympho with DD tits, if that floats your boat)
So we have taken me out of the equation.
Now please explain to us how your qualifications are better than, and how you know more about tires than Michelin tires, The Tire Rack, and the Tire Industry Association. (see post #25)
I’ll wait.
*Own repair shop? yup, and managed and managing dealership service departments
Race? SCCA, SCORE, and USAC. You?
Live in the mountains? Got me there.
An 18 year old DD nympho? Further proof that you never know where a SDMB thread is going to go.
I’m not quite sure a wet skidpad slalom is the only situation under discussion. If it is, don’t bother with the following. What about dry straight line braking? What about a full-brakes ABS lane change? What about snow? 70% of the work is done by the front tires. My new ones go on the front.
A good fact to check would be that most passenger cars currently made have built-in understeer to keep the melons driving them from looping the rear if anything gets out of balance…in order to eliminate liability lawsuits against the manufacturer. The push allows the melon to scare him/herself witless in a too-fast corner - because the car won’t turn any more - so he can slow down and live. The same speed in an early Porsche or VW would have a very different result.
Any decent racecar - especially a FWD one - REQUIRES the ability to get the rear loose before the front washes out and you lose steering input. Let’s not equate loose rear with sudden death. That far more frequently occurs with steering loss.
The only thing I would add is that you should follow the guidelines in your owner’s manual about proper tires and tire pressure.
At some point, it could could come down to you and the manufacturer if there is an accident or mechanical problems.
I grew up driving snow rallies in New England and opened my first of several BMW race shops in 1975. I’m a licensed car dealer in Los Angeles and I still race. MMH0019DDAndyLeonardHustlerSR
I just put new tires on the front of my Mini. I well and truly don’t care what you do on your rig. It’s none of my business.
i have an 02 focus ZTS and the same problem.
sucker DEVOURS tires. i have less than 70k miles and i have been through at least 20 tires.
in my case, tho, i’m getting uneven wear. they say i have a slightly bent steering knuckle, but that wheel doesn’t wear as poorly as the others.
and if he’s got an early-to-mid 00s focus, i can promise you another thing that’s gone or is going to go wrong: the window regulators will have the plastic bits rot off and they’ll stop working.
all four of mine did. almost every focus i’ve seen has had that happen, too.
eta:
mine’s that burnt orange special mach audio edition that came with Z rated high speed, low profile tires. which were special order and expensive. after the 16th tire, i went to a local ma and pa shop and they said i could just go up to a more standard size. they explained the mechanics of how it all fits and what was more important than the low profile aspect. and once i saw the price break and availability of the tires he proposed, i took the bait.
those tires are about in need of replacing (all four are worn about the same). it’s been just around 3 years/12k miles.
this is probably non-applicable to the subject at hand, but something i found interesting about tire rotation: did you know it’s imperative to maintain the directional arrows? not because of the tread-grip issues, but because the way the steel belts are laced in production, they are designed to centripetally stress in a specific way. on motorcycle tires in particular, if you get the spin different than the manufacturing method’s weave, you can cause them to simply disintegrate with the spin-force.
Hm don’t know about disintegration, they are pretty strong and that kind of failure would be lawsuit bait, more probably the grip would be not optimal, there are some directional tires but I bet most tires on cars out there aren’t directional
this is a factoid from the q and a section of cycleworld. i believe the author had some anecdotal experience, with points of contention in the forum saying what you just said–a lot of cars don’t have directional rotation. that is true–because directional tires are usually only of high performance ilk.
i think the stresses put on bike tires (and high HP cars) are far greater than (normal) cars and that’s part of the reason. apparently there’s unidirectional and [not unidirectional] tires.
Directional tires have construction and tread designed to rotate in only one direction. They are also called “unidirectional” tires. Directional tires will have an arrow with the word “rotation” on the sidewall showing the proper rotation direction.
i do know my old z-rated tires were unidirectional and it raised a lot of issues when it came to rotation and replacing one or two tires at a go.
they also were rated to “corner at speeds up to 160mph without folding in or under.”
because we all know a focus can do that…
i should have said “not ONLY because of the tread-grip issues.”
that is a factor, but when you are putting the kind of stresses on a tire that a hi-po vehicle can administer, such as motorcycles, the weave of the belts matter to the over-all structural integrity of the tire.
according to the ten commandments of tires:
.
if you also factor in a specialty tire with a belt-weave in a unidirectional pattern and spin it opposite of that, i think you get greater stresses in less time.
back to the op–
i do and will continue to buy as many or few tires as i need, all things considered.
but according to several manufacturers, mismatching tires causes heat imbalances and uneven wear, which can result is premature failure and “tire-pull.”
Hey Rick.
You know the chap who designed the 64 Corvette was William Mitchell. Well you will never guess what his own personal transport was. One of those LBCs. A Jaguar E Type.
I think that says it all.
I you’re ever in a tire store some time, pull two tires of the same size but different brands off the shelf and stand them side by side and I’ll bet there will be a difference. Someone told me that once and I didn’t believe them until I did it when I was working at a service station and I’ll be damned if it wasn’t true. One was a bit taller than the other even though they were marked the same size.
That’s a British car, but not a little British car. It’s just not in the same class at all.
From post #32: “LBC= Little British Car, think MG Trimuph, Austin Healey etc.”
Then there’s the question of what that has to do with the price of wheat, i.e. how does what Mitchell drove in any way relate to the quality of advice available on forums devoted to LBC’s?
Corvette ZR1
Ford GT
2013 Shelby Cobra
Beats the shit out of me what his point is. I think he believes that I don’t like British cars when the reverse is actually true. I have owned, driven, raced more than my share of LBCs.
I got done helping a buddy restore a 67 MGB a couple of months back. Not something a guy who hates LBCs would do.
My point was the average car owner on an Internet forum does not nearly as much as they think they do.
AND I doubt that any of them know as much about tires as the guys at Michelin, The Tire Rack, or the Tire Industry Association.
So holding them up as some type of experts on tire mounting is frankly a stupid idea. Not necessarily industrial grade stupid, but stupid nonetheless.
I agree with Rick - he’s provided multiple cites for his claim, and any simple google search corroborates that the better traction tires should go on the rear.
To be fair, it appears to have only been relatively recently proven via test tracks and so forth that putting them on the rear is better. So for everyone saying they’ve been putting new tires on the front for 30, 40 or 50 years, and using that as their qualifications - well, science appears has proven that wisdom incorrect since that time.
Another cite (admittedly not as valued as tire rack or the manufacturers, but still):
Popular Mechanics
Also, if you are hydroplaning on the rear wheels because you put the better tread up front, you have no warning. If you put the better tread up front and start hydroplaning, you feel that and notice it - which is what you want - a signal that you are in a dangerous position.