Originally Posted by Rooboy
Reply With QuoteThank you Amunra for trying to inform and assist the forum. I think everyone reading forums understood and know that contributors aren't race car driver scientists. In fact I don't think I've read a thread on this forum that met this criteria - funny how some people have seemingly pointed this strange anomaly out...
The forum members that are deriding your findings are suffering from Cognitive dissonance. If you started an exact same thread trialling cheap tyres and your findings were terrible they would have accepted your non-scientific feedback as evidence. It would have supported their pre-conceived understanding of what they understand as facts. This is especially common among older men, as the older they get, they are less likely to accept counter-evidence. Because your non-scientific findings were against these 'understood facts' - they are more likely to deride the way you carried out testing rather than accept your findings as alternative or balancing feedback. When this happens look for non-rational, emotional statements like 'my family' 'I wouldn't trust', or 'cheap chinese' (ironic that they're probably using a $1000 Chinese made iPhone...) or 'those extra cm's is the difference between life or death' rather than actual scientific evidence disproving your actual and specific tyre choice.
Regarding the helpful motor magazine tyre testing links. I'm also a fan of these. Notice that MOTOR has never done a 'Commuting Tyre Test'? Apart from being a boring read, the outcomes would be: "all tyres felt, drove, and stopped the same in the 25km/h city traffic test" "no discernible winner was identified" etc. So that covers 97% of drivers... for the other 3% who are lending out their high performance brand new car to a race driver with fresh new tyres to go around witches hats on the way to work - you can easily discern the extra 5% performance difference between the tyres...
Although Context is everything. Cheaper tyres will tend to perform worse than expensive tyres - generally. But that doesn't mean cheaper tyres are worse from a scientific perspective it just recognises other variables are at play. (Which I won't go into for brevity). Fundamentally - the best tyres and more expensive tyres only perform a very small percentage difference (not noticeable to 98% of drivers doing 98% of normal commuting driving) better than the cheapest and worst (avoiding the extremes at either end of the spectrum). The performance difference per cost is so miniscule it's mainly down to marketing, perception and a placebo effect. If we bought other commodities at the same price per performance difference as tyres, it would be laughable. Would you pay double the price for a hat because it had a 1mm wider rim (think of the skin cancer!)? Or spend 50% more to get a 2% performance difference? You can thank those highly paid pesky marketing people for why you do.
Yes at extreme ends - bad tyres are terrrible and $1000 semi-slick race tyres are grippy, but if your cheap tyres brake 30cm longer than a more expensive tyre and this worries you and keeps you up at night and you think your family is certainly going to die - you probably should buy a lighter car, buy wider tyres (refer dry driving only), look for softer compounds, or fit braided brake lines, or carry less petrol, or less passengers, or buy an AWD car, or buy a car with the latest ABS or ESP, change your tyres every 12months, get a wheel alignment, fit bigger brake rotors, only drive in the dry, change brake fluid every 12months, buy better brake pads, or drive 2 km/h slower or pay more attention to your driving- or have better reflexes and be under the age of 40. Or do all of the above. If you're nodding your head that you already do most of these you're probably in the top 1% of Australian cautious drivers. (Still won't stop you getting killed by the driver in the white Camry on bald tyres texting....) These are all variables at play and can't be looked at in isolation to tyres and this is also what makes spending a large amount on tyres compared to middle to lower spec strata tyres amusing. I will happily drag race any FWD car with the best tyres in an AWD with the worst tyres. I will happily do a braking test in a 1360kg Evo verse a 1700kg (average weight of passenger vehicles in Australia) car fitted with the best tyres money can buy.
There is a bell curve of tyre buying (performance v cost) - as long as you're not at either end you're fine.
Bookmarks