darksky

Wow, I just got back from spending 3+ hours at the local tire shop. They got in six of these Goodyear Eagle F1 A/S tires in the stock 235/45-17 size. I paid extra to have them road force balanced and unfortunately, only two of the six passed the road force test. They have to order me an additional two tires as a result (and who knows if they'll pass!) The manager told me this is common with this particular tire due to the carbon fiber side walls. I can feel a slight vibration when I'm driving above 70 MPH or so by the way.

I'm not sure if I should have them replace the two, or simply get a set of Bridgestone Potenza RE960AS Pole Position tires which were my 2nd choice. They lack the carbon fiber sidewalls the manager blamed for the failing road force balance. My main reason for buying these tires is to give me good snow traction without getting a dedicated snow tire.

Anyway, just thought I'd share my experience with the group. I'll update this thread once I figure out what I'm going to do.

The Dougler

iTrader: (1)

bridgestones FTW

Boever

Makes me glad I just bought Michelin Pilot Exalto A/S. I've had Goodyear's on two previous cars, and they were the worst tires I've ever driven on in the wet & snow.

spiike

I dunno what's up with that place you went to, but I have the F1's on 2 cars right now and they are awesome. 100x better than the MXM's on my car and another 100x better than the kumho tires on my brother's car.

avs007

We got our first snow of the year over christmas. It snowed about 6" on our hill so far, and our TL wearing RE960AS did very well. Unlike last year when it was wearing the stock crap, when my wife kept getting stuck.

berzerker

no offense, but I hope this is just your own bad luck


I just got these put on my car today after a disappointing year driving General Exclaim UHP's.

darksky

Well, I'm not going to roll the dice with these damn tires. If I were playing baseball 2 out of 6 would be a stellar average, but this isn't baseball How could Goodyear's QC group allow these tires to leave the factory?

darksky

Did you have them road force balanced? As I understand it, the technique of road force or "wheel force" balancing will match up the high point in your tire with the low point on your rims which gives the best balance and the best ride quality.



It is totally worth the $10/tire for them to do this and if you watch, they will bring the tire up to pressure, balance it, then use the machine/run the test and literally mark the two points on your wheel and tire (red arrows in the graphic above), deflate the tire and then SPIN the tire so that the two point match-up, reinflate and repeat. It's pretty time and labor intensive.

Anyway, the rule for passenger cars is that the tire must be <= 15 lbs of road force or else the tire shop has to replace them (it's higher for trucks and SUV tires). In my case, only two of the six they tried actually passed! I'm just curious about yours given the poor results on mine. If you take them in complaining about vibration, they may do this for you free-of-charge. This happened with my old Camaro SS....

The Nittos I purchased gave the same sort of vibration in the wheel around 70 MPH... after about 8,000 miles and several attempts on their part to balance the tires, I returned again complaining about the vibration and the manager did this road force test and ended-up giving me two brand-new ones. Discount Tire Company rocks for customer service in my experience

S PAW 1

You put Exalto's on a TL?
The Exalto's are great on my wife's Celica, but are not speed rated for TL's.

Boever

Why do I need a tire rated 149+ mph?? My car is never going to see those speeds, H speed rating is more that adequate. I'd be more concerned with the load rating.

S PAW 1

That's why I was cautious about people "raving" about them before they were given enough time to prove themselves. After all, when has Goodyear EVER produced an across-the-board technology leader? Not in the last 10-15 years anyway IMO. New, high tech tires come out every few months. I'll stick with the tried and true mfrs. that have tested the rigors of time successfully. If they cost a few bucks more.....well.....I paid a few more bucks for my Acura than a Chevy for a reason.
And I don't use regular gas either

S PAW 1

I'm surprised you could find a dealer who would install them. It's called LIABILITY I could go into further explanation, but I suspect it would be a waste of time, and off topic.

Boever

I would think if it was a question of liability, a place like the Tire Rack wouldn't do it. I don't recall seeing anything that says V rated tires are "required", they maybe recommended.

avs007

It's because people in the US are sue happy and don't like to take responsibilty for their own actions. (At least the folks that sue).

That's why cars like the Buick Regal GS are speed limited to 108mph and Pontiac Grand Prix GTP speed limited to 126 despite being essentially the same car with the same engine, because one has tires speed rated to 112 the other to 130. The TL is speed limited to 155 because it has tires speed rated to 168.

Most tire places I've been to around here (including places such as Costco) will down-right refuse to install tires that are speed-rated lower than what the car came with. (With perhaps the exception of winter tires)

There is a reason car manufacturers put speed limiters in their cars corresponding to the speed-rating of the tires that come on the car. They don't want you exceeding the ratings of the tires, than coming back and suing them.

And for the record, there is more to speed rating than just how fast you can drive. It also corresponds to the sidewall stiffness which directly affects handling.

avs007

Tire rack installs tires? I thought they are just an online store for tires?

weeeerd

Wow. Maybe you guys should check into what speed rating actually is. It's not just how fast the tires can go for a certain amount of time. :shakes head:

darksky

Little update: just got 4 new Bridgestone Potenza RE960AS Pole Positions. They all passed the road force balancing and there is absolutely no vibration in the wheel. This is in stark contrast with my ride quality from the Goodyear Eagle F1 A/S tires.

pttl

I thought you were dealing with a local tire shop. Is Discount Tire Direct local to you? Or, did you order the tires from DTD and have a local shop install them?

Boever

Yes, they install tires. I live 2 miles from their headquarters in South Bend. If the speed rating would have been a problem, they would have refused to do the install.

S PAW 1

As I said, it would be a waste of time to explain why the Exalto's aren't recommended for the TL. As stated there is MUCH more that goes into the speed rating than how fast a car is driven.
Go into www.tirerack.com and punch in your Acura. It will give you a standard size of 235/45/17. When your selection table pops up, it will provide to you the speed ratings for your car in already checked boxes. Guess what....no Exaltos!!
Waste of time, it isn't going to get through!
The Exalto is one fine tire...just not what most would want on their $30K+ Acura, nor does Michelin or Acura.
Why risk it?

darksky

Sorry... I unintentionally used the terms 'local tire shop' and 'Discount Tire' synonymously. I only use Discount Tire. They take care of customers in my experience, plus I have used their Certs many times when I get a roofing nail in my sidewall. Well worth the $35/tire in my experience.

pttl

Ok. So, you returned the Goodyears and re-ordered the 960's with no problem? The 960's seem to be more $$ now.

darksky

@pttl - yeah, the F1's went back (good riddance) although I didn't re-order the 960's since I never ordered them in the first place I got lucky in that they had four of them in house. And yes, it was an additional $28/tire after tax more but oh well. Life is too short to nickel and dime yourself the death and the ride is very smooth now with no noise. We'll see how the do in the snow later...

S PAW 1

Discount tire is in Carmel, Ind.
Tirerack is in Southbend.

avs007

the 960 may be a few more bucks, but they also have a 40,000 mile warranty, so you'll get some money back when they wear out early. (i don't really expect to get 40k miles out of em')

darksky

This is also true. Plus there are trivial differences that make the BS tire better. Just load the two up in tirerack.com and compare them to see what I'm talking about.

darksky

For those interested, I wrote a brief summary of my first experience in "deep" snow with these tires in [url=https://acurazine.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1924173#post1924173this thread[/url]. I didn't post it here since it's kinda off topic.

DMZ

Yeah, I did look up the differences on tirerack. The Eagle F1 A/S's edged out the BS 960's (and all the others) in wet conditions, where safety counts most ..... NEXT......

darksom1

+1...just because you had a bad experience Darksky, why you raining on the Eagle F1s?? I still have my summer F1s on, but I can't wait until I get the A/S ones! They are superior to the BS in road tests according to the very people you referenced!

darksky

Not trying to be a playa hater here guys... just my experience with 6 tires

avs007

I think he was referring to Tire Rack's Tire Survey which shows the RE960AS leading the F1 A/S. What I find funny, is that when the RE960AS first came out, and did well, people said that there were too few miles on the survey to get meaningful results. Now that it has a good number of miles on the survey, people are singing the praises of the F1 A/S even tho it has relatively few miles on the survey just as the RE960AS did previously. Although when the RE960AS first came out, it was still tops on the survey. People are singing praises to the F1 A/S even tho it is not only ranked #3 in the sruvey, it has much less miles on the survey.

leedogg

More bad news regarding the F1's...I've seen quite a few posts regarding this issue now. Concerning.

spiike

http://www.tirerack.com/tires/tests/...ay.jsp?ttid=87

Your potenza's ranked last in this one.

darksom1

Yeah...that's the post I referenced, and to me the one that counts. The other poll that Darksky is referring to, is a survey. Would you rather trust the survey or the experts?

darksky

Sorry guys, I'm wasn't referring the the survey when I said:

I meant you need to select each tire, then click compare (I tried to post a URL that lead directly to this, but it didn't work due to excessive use of javascript). Here are the data I was talking about -- and remember I said these were trivial differences that make the BS tire better:



I put a green checkmark by the slight advantage. The reason the 'revs per mile' on the BS got the check is that the stock Turanza EL42 tires are spec'ed out at 817 so the BS tire is closer to that than the GY tire (-0.37 % error vs. -0.86 % error respectively). As I said, trivial differences!

Perhaps the only non-trivial difference above is that the BS tire comes with a treadlife warranty of 40,000 miles compared to none in the GY.

Just to bring the thread back to the original topic, my major beef with the GY tire was ride quality (or lack there of) due to poor quality control at Goodyear. I base this statement on real data: out of six tires the shop had in stock, only two passed the road force balancing test. The techs told me that very few tires fail this test once they are spun to match up where the instrument tells them (i.e. matching the high point in the tire with the low point on the rim). As I stated originally, my wheel had some vibration in it on the drive home as a result.

The manager told me that this particular tire [the Goodyear Eagle F1 All Season] is notoriously bad in this regard due to carbon fiber reinforcing in the sidewalls. One thing I didn't mention in my original post was that one of the install guys told me in passing that he personally dealt with a number of dissatisfied customers who also returned the Eagle F1 A/S due to vibration and road noise.

In contrast to the GY tires, all four of the BS tires passed road force balancing -- two of them didn't even need to be spun around. After I got the BS tires installed, the steering wheel was still (no vibration) and the ride was much quieter. I'm very happy with the BS tires in this regard. On a related topic, see this post for a few details of my experience driving with the BS tires in "deep" snow.

Anyway, if you managed to get a set of these of the Eagle F1 A/S tires, and you're happy with the ride quality, count yourself lucky and enjoy them. If you're thinking about purchasing replacement tires and are considering the Goodyear Eagle F1 A/S and the Bridgestone Potenza RE960AS Pole Position, I hope you found some value in this thread

OneWickedTypeS

I'VE HAD THE GOODYEARS ON FOR LITTLE WHILE AND I AM HAPPY SO FAR, HAD SOME PRETTY GOOD RAIN THIS PAST WEEKEND.

WHAT YEAR BUICK CAUSE MINE WENT WAY PAST 108


[QUOTE=avs007]It's because people in the US are sue happy and don't like to take responsibilty for their own actions. (At least the folks that sue).

That's why cars like the Buick Regal GS are speed limited to 108mph and Pontiac Grand Prix GTP speed limited to 126 despite being essentially the same car with the same engine, because one has tires speed rated to 112 the other to 130. The TL is speed limited to 155 because it has tires speed rated to 168.

avs007

I know 1998 for sure, I didn't really follow the Regal GS, since I own a Grand Prix. But I know prior to 2000' the Regal GS came with Goodyear Eagle LS tires, which are only rated to 112. I remember people on the GM boards mentioned that the Regals (at the time with those tires) were speed limited to 108.

Did you buy your Regal new? Cause I know it was pretty easy to reflash the ECU to remove the speed limiter.

OneWickedTypeS

NOPE I HAD A 99, NOT PROUD TO SAY I HAD IT WAAAAY FASTER THAN THAT.
BUT THIS IS HOW IT ENDED UP LATER, NOT DO TO DRIVING FAST I WAS ACTULLY SITTING STILL...

avs007

Did you buy it new? It sounds like your GS had either a reflashed ECU or an aftermarket ECU... Look here, the 99' Regal GS was speed limited to 108mph.

avs007

Also if you look at this article it shows that all regal GS from 97-04' were limited to 108mph.