Reviews by community members are the foundation of CarReview.com. Share your experience with other car owners by writing reviews for your cars, aftermarket parts, and car audio components. You don’t have to be an expert – everyone’s opinion counts.

Featured Review: Uniroyal Touring Trak A/S tires installed on 1996 Lexus ES300

by Josh

Review Date: Feb 25, 2011
Overall Rating: 5 of 5
Value Rating 5 of 5
Used product for: 3 months to a year

Summary:
I bought this car,and the previous owner put this on the car. I live in a very high amount of snow area and I have tested these tire very well,while people doing 30-40mph in a snow storm,I have passed them doing 55mph plus,with NO part of me being scared of whipping out,these tires performed AWESOME!!!! With the grip,they will have to be replaced by the next winter of 2011,but I will %100 put these tires “NEW” back on this car,and at high speeds they handle awesome!!,very quiet, no noise,very very very impressed with these tires,

Strengths:
AWESOME in the snow!!!!!!,and rain,and high speeds,not to say its right,but I have done 110mph in the car,and not even or no shaking at all,no scary parts of the car losing control

Weaknesses:
NONE

Similar Products Used:
Goodyear VIVA 2. Also very very good in snow,if your store doesn’t carry one of these tire’s but has the other one,go with the one they carry between both of these,we use to fly over a huge puddle with these tires and not even slowing down,while everyone else in front of us was slowing down.

Tires are basically four patches of rubber between you and the road. Often ignored or neglected, those four contact points are ultra-critical to the safety and performance of your car. If you think about it, tires are crucial to keeping you ON the road and avoiding potential hazards. The condition and quality of your tires affect the ride quality, fuel economy efficiency, the amount of traction, and the braking distance. We might go so far as to say that a good tire choice can be the single best upgrade for improving the performance of your favorite ride, whether it be your daily commuter, family urban SUV, or your garage queen. Wouldn’t you want the best when thinking about safety, performance, and fuel economy for something you rely upon almost daily?

Over the past 20 years advances in tire technology have dramatically improved the modern driving experience. The latest tires enable vehicles to deliver a smoother ride, sharper handling and better mileage than their predecessors. As important, today’s tires deliver these improvements with extended service life and improved safety.

Since today’s tires are so refined and have effectively become an integral part of a car’s suspension, choosing the right replacement tire is more complex than it used to be. Add to this increased importance choices of style, specialized performance and cost and the process can feel overwhelming. Most people just want to quickly pick up new set of tires at a fair price. That is certainly possible, but a little extra homework can go a long way in making an efficient, informed choice.This overview offers some general guidelines to consider when shopping for new tires and will provide basic insight into reading the Rosetta Stone of tire sidewall markings.

Tire Shopping Basics

Finding the exact OEM tire or updated equivalent for a discount is an ideal outcome provided that you take the time to make sure that what you read, find on the Internet or see in the store is a fresh, exact replacement. Along with the diameter, width and performance specifications provided in the owner’s manual shoppers should be ready to compare more detailed information gleaned from the old tire’s sidewall. In fact, the National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) requires all tire sidewalls provide specific details about the tire so consumers can make informed purchase and maintenance decisions. The sidewall includes information about: treadwear/traction/temperature ratings, speed and load ratings, winter weather capabilities and the tire identification number. The picture below shows generally where each marking can be found.

Sometimes an exact match replacement is not feasible or appropriate. In this case, matching as many variables as possible with a different brand of tire can be a perfectly acceptable alternative. When too many variables do align with the choices at hand, shoppers should consider how the differences will affect the performance of the vehicle. For example, all other things being equal, a run-flat or high treadwear tire may seem like a smart choice, but the ride of the car could suffer.

When wrestling with these types of decisions, a little advice from the dealer can go a long way. Under these circumstances, fully understanding their recommendation and moving forward with a purchase may require knowing a bit more about tire sidewall markings and what they mean. The list below describes the more significant variables and their possible impact on the performance of the car.

Diameter, width and aspect ratio: It is generally not advisable to deviate from these basic OEM specifications unless the purchase is part of a plan to enhance a certain characteristic of the car (e.g. handling). Tire upgrades for performance will be addressed in a future article and most consumers are best served by aligning the dimensions of original and replacement tires.

Treadwear, Traction and Grade: Generally speaking, it is fine for the replacement tire to subtly improve upon the original tire’s specifications with these variables. Extreme changes, especially with treadwear will come with compromises such as a harder ride and less dry road traction.

Load index, speed, max load rating: It is important to make sure that the replacement tires meet or exceed all of these variables. Each is critical to vehicle safety and directly corresponds to the car manufacturer’s requirements for safe travel.

Weather capabilities: Generally speaking, passenger tires are categorized as ‘summer’, all season or mud and snow tires. Summer tires offer the best performance on dry warm roads, but can be a handful when temperatures cool and rain turns to snow. All-season tires can handle light snow and offer more balanced overall performance. Mud and snow tires perform well in heavier winter conditions, but unlike true snow tires, they can be driven year round. Again, matching the OEM type of tire will provide you with the weather capabilities you are used to. However, all other things being equal, switching to a tire designed for weather in your area can improve your driving experience.

Yokohama Tire has a 3 and half minute video, with off-road champion Cameron Steele, explaining how to read those numbers on the sidewall of a tire.

Click here to view the embedded video.

With new tires in hand, it is important to find a reputable installer to mount, balance and index them. Often this can be done at the tire store at the time of purchase. A precisely balanced tire pays dividends in every performance category. Always keep all receipts in case something doesn’t feel right, but recognize that new tires can dramatically change the feel of the car. Ideally, it should feel brand new or better.

(Continued on page 2)

Normally racing and the environment are not mutually exclusive terms, but Yokohama wishes to change that with a line of eco-friendly line of tires for the SCORE, SNORE and the American Le Mans Series. Much like the Yokohama dB Super E-spec tires that we covered in the past, these new tires also use orange oil to reduce the amount of petroleum used to make a tire.

According to Japanese tire maker, the ADVAN ENV-R1 reduces petroleum use by 10 percent and is easier to recycle. Yokohama also claims the ENV-R1 is the first environmentally-friendly tire to ever be used in a racing series.

The tire will perform just as well as other racing slick compounds and in the future will require even less petroleum to produce. The process to form the tire uses orange oil and natural rubber to produce a compound Yokohama is calling “Nano-Power” rubber.

Research for the Nano-Power rubber began back in the 1980s. As part of Yokohama’s new global environmental strategy, research was recently accelerated to produce the ADVAN ENV-R1. Surprisingly, the new technology is actually cheaper than the non eco-friendly tire it replaced.

Despite the use of orange oil and the lower price, the tire can still win races. During last year’s 25 Hours of Thunderhill endurance race, the top two GT3 cup cars used the ADVAN ENV-R1 tires. Johannes van Overbeek, the man that won that race, praised the new tire, “They were consistent and durable. We never got a puncture, which is critical in winning an endurance race. What really impressed me was how it adapted to the wide range of temperatures. The temperature at night was 20 degrees and during the day it was 63. The tires worked extremely well in that huge range, and a lot of tires don’t do that.”

Yokohama’s street use E-spec tires consist of 80 percent natural materials and offer 22 percent lower rolling resistance than the stock tires on a Prius. This means that they are not only earth friendly, but will get you extra gas mileage as well.

As tire companies look for new ways to produce tires that come from renewable resources it will be interesting to see what they end up using. Orange oil extracted from orange peels is an unexpected substance to find in a racing tire. Sadly the tires do not smell like oranges when tearing up a racetrack, but maybe that is something Yokohama is working on.

If you desire more concrete evidence, Tire Rack published the results of their low-rolling resistance tire test that used a Toyota Prius as their test vehicle and subjected the new generation of low-resistance tires to a battery of tests (braking, cornering, mpg performance, etc.). Yokohama’s formal press release and link to the Tire Rack test follows after the jump.

(Continued on page 2)

Orange oil-infused tires are the new green for saving the environment

Yokohama has introduced a new tire model that replaces 80% of the petroleum based products that used to make up a tire’s composition with non-petroleum based products. The new dB Super E-spec passenger tire uses Yokohama’s Super Nano-Power Rubber compound and Advanced Inner Liner to create a tire that is 80% petroleum free, performs better than conventional tires made of vulcanized rubber, and has ultra-low rolling resistance.

The new Yokohama orange oil-infused tire is their first product designed specifically for hybrid automobiles. Introduced in Japan in 2007, the dB super E-spec reconciles the conflict between low rolling resistance – key to delivering improved fuel economy – and superior grip in both wet and dry conditions while offering the quiet, comfortable ride that compliments the silent driving characteristics of hybrids. This translates directly into improved fuel economy as rolling resistance can account for up to 20 per cent of the friction that a vehicle must overcome when moving.

If you reduce rolling resistance, you also reduce grip – at least that is what basic physics tells me – but Yokohama has managed to work out a nice compromise. Their engineers accomplished this by developing a rubber compound based on orange oil. Orange oil is a naturally sticky substance and, when combined molecularly with other oils, allows the compound to become soft when warm, providing more grip as the tire is driven harder, and then return to a stiffer compound during less stressful driving conditions.

We tried out Yokohama’s eco-friendly tires on MINI Coopers and found that the dB Super E-spec tire is not only quiet, but provides pretty good performance for a tire that has fuel economy at the top if its design goal list.

Several runs on a slalom course revealed a number of good things about these green tires with an orange a-peel. Road grip was good enough to keep our test MINI Cooper on track without the usual tire squeal from typical OE all-season passenger tires. Turn-in response was predictable and accepted input from the driver better than a trained Doberman. Our 50 – 0 dry braking test posted some very good numbers. From 52 mph to zero, we only needed 85 feet to come to a complete stop. TireRack tested OE and aftermarket tires in the same class and typical results from their dry braking test showed tires needed 97 to 101 feet to stop after standing on the brakes from 50 mph.

Off the test course the E-spec tires had minimal road noise across rough surfaces, but more miles need to be logged on a variety of surfaces before we can fully evaluate the tire’s road noise level and comfort.

(Continued on page 2)