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Comments
-mike
-Frank P.
People with antique cars that are seldom driven often run on tires 20 years old or more.
are you kidding me?
This morning at -40, which is, incidentally -40 no matter C or F, my car firstly cried, begging me not to take it for the ride, but to go on foot instead. Then the door wouldn't close. It had to be hit very hard for the lock to engage. Then stick shifter kept popping out of the gear. I couldn't believe it - push it into the reverse or 1st, and it slowly returns back into neutral (before the clutch is released, of course). Talking about the clutch, it felt like I stuck my left foot into the jar of honey. Wouldn't go down, once down - wouldn't get back. Sound from the real differential after first attempt to move - brutal.
But with all that, no more cranking than usually.
K
I'm still going to experiment with a small fan. I bought a tiny 12V DC fan that draws .02 Amps. I will install it in front of the temp sensor and wire it to be on when the ignition is in Run mode. I'm just waiting for the temps to get above 30 so I can work on the car.
Steve, Host
Drive belts used to show age by little cracks...now they just fail.
Having experienced tire failure due to age (on a motorcycle and it was only 5 years old with no visible signs), I side with Mike...it's not worth it to find the true shelf-life of a tire.
I can't offer an exact time line but 10 years is way too long.
Don
Don
Steve, Host
Larry
I'd say just inspect them closely. On mine I could see tiny cracks in the bends. They were useless with grip, too. Tread was not even close to the wear indicator bars, too.
-juice
No, as it happens, I've never worked for any automaker or any tiremaker. Why?
To stay on-topic, I LOVED the Firehawks I used on my WRX wagon that won't fit on my XT. :-)
-Dennis
Had I known some of you guys back then I'd have saved it for you.
Ed
Of course. Everyone who can fog a mirror knows about that. It has no bearing whatever on what I've written about tires, so I still don't know what motivated andmoon's question about whether or not I've ever worked for Ford or Firestone. The implication seemed to be that I might have an undisclosed axe to grind. Not so.
Oh yeah, did I mention that I LOVE this car!
-Frank P.
What's your total mileage right now, and I take it that you feel you've gotten slightly better mileage as the XT has worked in (AT or MT?) You appear to be right at the EPA limit. Are some people getting 25 on the highway?
Zman
I just bought them for my AWD Passat Wagon (~$70 a tire – I would say they are about 2 grades up from your average $70-100 all-weather tire).
I had planned to just get Summer tires here in SoCal to replace the POS OEM Michelins, but because of my upcoming move to the Bay Area (and associated temps, rain, and snow in mountains) I went for All Weather, again. I now have 2000 miles on them, and so far, they are superb. Much less noisy than the Michelins I had before (which became outright annoying after 10K miles), and great traction. On a few on-ramps where I usually slowed to 70mph or below, now traction seems to be limited by the aging (60Kmiles) stock springs/shocks, rather than the rubber. The only thing I liked about the Michelins was that they would go smoothly into a 4-wheel drift when traction was exceeded. All I can say that to date, I have not been able to exceed the traction of the ContiExtremeContacts to tell you how they behave at the limit.
On most surfaces I simply cannot hear these tires until about 80mph, when usually the air flow noise starts to dominate. (In the Passat, with increasing speed, first you only hear the fan, then the outside air; unless you punch it really hard, you can barely hear the engine - and with good tires, they hardly figure in, either).
Oh yes, thanks Jason, for the nice write-up.
Foamy residue in oil can be due to the oil not sufficiently often reaching the temps to burn of the water that is accumulating. Drive longer and harder
Did someone mention the LA grapevine? Carrying several hundred pounds of passengers and/or luggage, I set my cruise control to 77mph (10% over speed limit spares me Jack's wrath and the CHPs) and the AT never moves below 5th. (Although the torque converter lock switches off a couple of times, raising the rpms from just under 3000 to just above). That kind of effortless climbing is what I hope to expect from the XT.
- D.
77mph puts me in the 99.9th percentile on the grapevine, but not on the straight I5, where I get passed by many SUVs and pickups that do about 90 to 100mph. What will these poor drivers do if they encounter anything but a straight road at this speed in those type of vehicles?????
No attempted implications of any sort. Firestones that failed due to causes other than road hazards was what I was thinking and it was my failed humurous way of pointing to them.
Don
That's about where I set mine when out beyond metropolitan areas on freeways, maybe even 80 if other cars were few. Commuting on I-5 through Portland, (even at my usual 5 a.m. commute time), I'm just not comfortable above 70. I don't know how others can feel safe pounding along at 90-100 cruise speeds on public roads. Too many unpredictable events can occur.
We all paid attention when the Explorer/Firestone issues were front and center. It remains true that every tire failure I've ever had stemmed from a foreign object in the tire. That being the case, I'm always somewhat skeptical when large numbers of failures are attributed to other causes. I still haven't entirely made up my mind what to think about the Ford/Firestone fiasco. In other words, (1) was the tire manufacturing process truly defective? Or (2) did Ford install tires with insufficient margin of load-carrying capacity for an SUV that commonly gets loaded up? Or (3) did the tires that catastrophically failed do so because their owners didn't maintain correct pressures for the loads, temperatures, and speeds involved? Or (4) were quite a few of the vehicles being driven at unreasonable speeds for the loads/inflation pressures/temperatures/etc.? <see allhorizon's note above about SUVs going past him at 90-100 mph>. I would not be at all surprised if tires begin to separate and blow on heavy vehicles traveling at those speeds on warm days with significant loads, and I wouldn't be inclined to blame those failures on Firestone - or on Ford, for that matter. Yet that's exactly what the plaintiffs' lawyers of the world did. People are always looking for the pot of gold in somebody else's pocket.
Ask the "average" driver what their tire pressure is supposed to be and when they last checked it, and its usually good for a blank stare. Most people are very surprised to find that their tires' pressure changes over time and will be different in very cold and very hot conditions. Also, most don't know about adjusting tire pressures for loading conditions.
I don't get it. It's my life, my passenger's lives, and other driver's who'll pay for my sloth. Oh wait, it can't be my fault, someone else must be responsible, let me sue somebody.
As much as I thought the previous generation of Explorers were more prone to rollovers, I'll always believe that poorly maintained tires contributed greatly to those mishaps.
I realize I'm preaching to the choir, and that my rant doesn't apply to people on these groups because average people aren't on these groups :<)
Back to our regularly scheduled.....
Larry
Desperately needed tort reform simply must take full account of so-called victims' failure (or, more often, refusal) to use common sense.
Tort reform is easy; just adopt the English Rule like Alaska did. Loser pays a portion of the winner's attorney's fees and costs. Reform shouldn't result in a loss of legitimate existing rights.
Ah jeeze Jack, you've sucked the host into an off-topic thread. Let's stick to turbos please.
Steve, Host
-B
-juice
Poll Finds Consumers Would Reduce Tire Maintenance (Rubber Manufacturers Association)
Steve, Host
Common sense is already expected of plaintiffs. Under the doctrine of comparative negligence, if the plaintiff's negligence exceeds the defendant's then the plaintiff recovers nothing.
Since Steve's asked that we return to the topic, I'll refrain from mentioning any of the abuses typical of defendants and insurers.
Gotta admit I don't check the pressure on a regular schedule. When a tire looks like it might be low, I plunk a couple of quarters into a compressor at a gas station, check on all four, inflating as needed. I realize there's room for improvement.
I'm thinking about buying a compressor. A local store is always advertising what looks like something adequate for less than $100.00. I imagine it would earn its keep in added tire life and improved handling, gas mileage and safety.
Question: how many of you own a compressor? For those of you who don't, how do you maintain your tires?
-les
-B
Larry
I'd love a compressor in the garage, but since we can't even get a car in there right now my dw would likely tell me to get rid of some bikes first. ;-)
-Ian
I would never suggest that tire manufacturing defects never occur, just that they are very rare. It's the last thing I'd suspect when a tire fails, unless the symptoms are plain, not the first.
We sometimes fail to recognize how well off we are. Some of you folks never had the pleasure of taking long road trips in the '40s and '50s. It was sufficiently uncommon then to make a complete crossing of the country without at least one tire failure that it was prudent to carry two spares. Those older than I who traveled prior to WW2 had it even worse.
I'm a biker, too. But I don't think I have the patience for the hand pump method.
In the past I've used one of the portables that plugs into a cigarette lighter, but it's blown a fuse in my Forester and in a Camry before reaching 30 psi. (Speaking of fuses, where's the fuse box in the '02 Forester)?
So now it's time to invest in a real compressor.
I keep tire gauges in each car and try to check pressures every other week.
Does fine but wish it was at least 4 gals as it starts / stops much too often. Nice and handy to carry around though.
DaveM