Tough on tyres ? Lets see how hard you are ?

[Simos]

Hi Folks,

 

There's always lots of tyre talk on the forum concerning softness of tyres.

 

I notice that my A032r's have a treadwear index marked on the sidewall of 60, whereas the Uniroyals on my station car have an index of 230.

 

Now treadwear must be related to softness if not directly to grip (because of different chemical reactions of the coumpounds) BUT it would give an indication, wouldn't it ?

 

So the question is:

 

How hard is your tyre, what is the tread wear index on the side ?

 

Anyone who has A021, 510, Pilots etc etc as many as possible please have an eyeball at your tyres and see if we can build a list...

 

Cheers, Simon.

[Graham Sewell]

The treadwear index is a relative number to give an indication to how many miles to a set of tyres with an average car. However, each manufacturer chooses their own starting place so you can only compare one Uniroyal tyre with another Uniroyal tyre.

 

Cheers,

 

GRaham

[Brad Tipp]

According to the Michelin Web site , you are talking about UTQGS

 

Uniform Tire Quality Grading Standards

A tire information system that provides consumers with ratings (from A to C) for a tire's traction and temperature. Treadwear is normally rated from 60 to 620. Ratings are determined by tire manufacturers using government-prescribed test procedures, and are molded into the sidewall of the tire.

 

So although they are not independantly tested there should be a correlation between them.

 

Well yes officer i'm not arguing, it's just that [insert excuse here]...

[stevefoster]

If it's the number after the dimensions on 021's then my 185 60 13 fronts have 80

and the 205 60 13 rears have 87???

Not sure this is right number.

 

021's will do more miles simply because there is more tread of course, no idea if this factor is built in

 

 

[Graham Perry]

I seem to recall that some treadwear indices are issued by the US national highway transport safety administration and that they test tyres by towing a trailer over a pre-defined route with the maximum load that can be safely used with that tire. As a consequence due to the number of possible variablest(temp.load driving style etc) treadware indices can only be used as a very approximate indication of available grip. An typical example of where it is not reliable is the Falken ZE-502 where it has an index of 300 to 420 depending on the size yet is surprisingly grippy and pretty much a match for my yoko 510's which are only 200. Treadwear indices may also vary from size to size within a tyre model . At home somewhere I have a list of all treadware indices for tyres available in the USA (about 500 tyres) . If we ignore cross ply's I seem to recall that the lowest were all made by Bridgestone and Yoko and were tires like the S-02, A008R and A021R.

 

Edited by - Graham Perry on 2 Aug 2001 19:01:50

 

Edited by - Graham Perry on 3 Aug 2001 07:16:43

[Simos]

I knew it would be too easy. Oh well, worth a try. I don't see why there shouldn't be an independant wear rating like the speed ratings, too much to hope I suppose.

 

Cheers, Simon.

[Tony Martyr]

Suggest you look at:

http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/cars/testing/tirerate/utqgs.html