I have had many vehicles with the BFG's from BJ's. Good price, good service, road hazard included for the ten bucks for mounting and balancing and disposal and valve stems. I would have put them on the benz in an instant, but they are not available in the size with the proper load rating.

I have also had many vehicles with Michelins, ditto experience, but the world has changed. It seems that all manufacturers have developed mattress mentality. Every store gets a unique model which makes comparason shopping impossible. So Tire Rack has some iteration of Michelin or whoever, but you will never find that at WalMart. Also, the days are long gone when all that mattered was tire wear. Speeds are much higher, weather is more significant, and I am older. So performance is first. My days of digging out of the snow are over. AWD and tires need to do it now.

I have not too much memory of anything good about any other brands, and much bad memory with Goodyear, Uniroyal, and now Continental.

 

IM NEW HERE BUT,,,I GOT ONE OF THE FIRST CLS500'S ON 1/15/05, 2 DAYS BEFORE NATIONAL ROLL OUT. IT CAME WITH CONTINENTAL "Y" HIGH PERFORMANCE (?) TIRES . FROM THE BEGINNING IT HAS BEEN IMPOSSIBLE TO BALANCE THE TIRES AT LEGAL SPEEDS, AND 2 WERE REPLACED EARLY ON AS OUT OF ROUND. AT ABOUT 9500 MILES, I HAD ONE BLOW OUT @ 80 MPH, AND A PUNCTURE IN -6 DEGREE WEATHER. A 3RD TIRE WAS SHOWING WEAR INDICATOR, LEAVING ONE SURVIVOR AFTER ONE YEAR. I BOUGHT 2 NEW CONTINENTALS (ONE FRONT-ONE REAR/DIFFERENT SIZES) TO GET OFF THE DONUT AND AROUND TOWN UNTIL I COULD WORK OUT SOMETHING W/MERCEDES BENZ. I NOW HAVE A SET OF PERELLI'S FROM MB. THEY ALSO OFFERED MICHELINS. SO, AFTER ONE YEAR, THERE HAVE BEEN 12 TIRES ON THIS CAR (INCLUDING THE ONES THAT CAME ON IT), THE TIRES STILL CANNOT BE BALANCED AT ALL LEGAL SPEEDS, WEEK BEFORE LAST THEY REPLACED THE FRONT LEFT WHEEL AND DROPPED A WRENCH ON THE FENDER...AND IT GOES ON AND ON...

THE ONLY WARRANTY THAT I COULD DETERMINE IS IF YOU COULD PROVE A MANUFACTURERS DEFECT-PERIOD! THEN,, THE CALCULATIONS BEGIN WITH THE TREAD WEAR,ETC. THERE IS NO WARRANTY SIMPLY FOR TREAT WEAR THAT I COULD FIND.

MB TEL-AID TOLD ME THE "HIGH PERFORMANCE" TIRES ARE DELICATE AND VERY SENSITIVE AND THAT MY DEALER TOLD ME THAT BEFORE I BOUGHT THE CAR??? FIRST I'VE HEARD OF THAT, BUT IT WOULD APPEAR TO BE TRUE IN MY CASE...

 

If multiple tires of different brands cannot be balanced, the balance problem is not with the tire. In the days of drum brakes, it was not all that uncommon to have a difficult balance problem which was almost always traced back to a badly out of balance drum. Disc brakes virtualy eliminated that problem. If I were confronted with your balance problem, I would start taking things apart until I found the real problem. Also, I would not immediately blame what you call out of balance at legal speeds a balance problem in the first place. I have owned and seen sever cars with apparent balance problems at a particular speed that turned out to be a suspension or alignment problem. Clearly, something is wrong, but more hours on the balance machine are not going to fix it.

Since you have a new car, I would first suspect the idler arm is not securely attached to the frame, if you have an idler arm. Then I would inspect the tie rod ends to be sure there was no play. Also, look for leaks. I once encountered a Mercury Grand Marquis that behaved like it had a tire balance problem. The reality was that it ran over some debris at one time, and the shaft out the bottom of the steering box had some play in it fron a crushed bushing. Old cars means damage or wear. New cars means faulty assembly, then damage. You just do not know where some folks put chains on them to secure them to the car carriers. Your car needs to go up on a lift and have a real thourough inspection by an old guy with a tire iron.

 

Before the new Michelin MXV4s were on my car, I had a set of tires that cannot be balanced. (Since there is so much heat on name brands in this post, I will avoid describing the brand of my bad tires.)

I took the car in to the best tire gurus in town. That's where I found out that those tires cannot be balanced because they were "hopping".

The tire experts explained that such hopping is caused by inferior quality control. For example, out of 100 tires coming out from MXV4 line, Michelin might throw away 20 because these tires can never be balanced since they were born. General Tires might throw away 5 out of 100, not because their tires are born better but because they want higher yield to boost quantity as their selling price per tire is much lower. (This is the nature of the beast....so don't argue with me now.)

So, for an average consumer, it is better to pay top dollars (perhaps $30 to $50 more per tire) and get the well known tires such as Assurance and MXV4 than....having troubles later and fight the tire maker to get replacement. (Don't argue with me that I only know cheap tire models because you drive a specialty car like a Corvette Z06, V12 Benz, or a BMW. I said average in the first place.)

However, for a college student...I think General Tires, Cooper, Kumho, or Guardsman is fine. Even if they hop...so what! Just go to classes and haul your *** home. When I was in college, I had three different brands of tire on my car. They vibrated so bad that I got aroused from time to time. But I lived...and graduated.

 

No one has to live with a tire that hops and can't be balanced, unless you steal it out of a junkyard. It doesn't matter how much you paid for it. Some people like you, I suppose, choose to do so, but I don't understand why.

 

I find it highly unlikely that you would encounter a run of such hoppy tires across several manufacturers at the same time.

 

I've had two tires before (not on the same car or even in the same decade) that couldn't be balanced--through no fault of my own, BTW. I had them replaced. No big deal.

The maj is just giving examples as far as throw away numbers to illustrate a point. He's not claiming those are actual numbers. A 20% defect rate would be outrageous. I doubt Michelin could survive with a number like that. It's less than 1% I'm sure, but I won't stake any of my appendages on it.

 

True, I was illustrating with an example to get the point across.....emphasis on the example. These numbers did not come from anywhere.