okay, well its time for me to get new tyres for my 18's. At the moment I have cheap ones that came on it and are devastatingly craptastic.

Looking to spend around $800-1000. I was planning on spending a bit more and getting Goodyear Eagle F1's, as my parents have these on their cars and they are unbelievable. However, my a/c compressor died last week so just had to get that fixed.

I found Nankang NS2's pretty cheap, but have read the rubber compound is a bit hard and lasts ages but isn't so good in the wet.

I think i read somewhere that Maxxis AV1's or something are quite good and not too expensive?

If anyone could shed some light that would be much appreciated.

Cheers

Hey Skidder, used to be a rubber grub (flogged tyres) for about 10-12 yrs. You get what you pay for, still holds true here mate. As a guide the more you pay the less K's you get but the better they hang on. I run run 17's on my car and get about 35k's a set. The goodyears are ok but tend to be a bit noisy when they're down a bit but running pressures around 36-38 psi front and around 30-32 rears will get you good even wear without tearing the edges off the fronts and rotate every 5k rather than every 10k's makes a huge difference to tyre life. Prefer Falkens myself but the last set of brigestones were very good, currently running toyo's but they only ok in the wet. A cheap tyre is just that-cheap. Probably doesn't help with a brand choice for you but hope it helps

yea i have used potenza's before (in 16's) and they were pretty good, i think they are over $300 a corner though for 18's

I think i have only got around 25000 out of my current ones which are quite a hard compound...probably could have got atleast another 5000 if my alignment was done properly....

I found the Maxxis MAV1's have got pretty good reviews and are just under $200 a tyre so might check them out

Rog264, out of interest, why do you run such hard pressures up front, and soft up the back?

I usually run 35 psi all round...

Easy, allowing that most cars today have power steer and people don't check either alignment or pressures anywhere near enough ! You should really check your pressures almost every time you fuel up, because you do get pressure leaking from your tyres, whether it be around the clip on weights or valve stems or valves and through the side walls and through porous rims. But the biggest problem is people not understanding that spinning the steering wheel when NOT moving the car mainly when parking rips both the inside AND outside edges off the tyres. By running a harder front pressure you make the ty re turn off the centre of the tread and NOT the edges which is where most of the wear comes from. The bonus comes in sharper turn in when cornering and better all round front end grip ( we are talking road use here), with the rears thats where your ride comfort comes from so you aren't going to car that rides like a dray and it will help negate the natural understeer thats engineered into your chassis and you will better tyre life and better fuel economy to boot. The pressures on the tyre placard are there because ADR's say they have to but they are still biased towards ride comfort MORE than anything else.

Don't get the Maxxis, they're not very good. Check out Federal 595's, came recommended to me by an instructor at Barbagello Raceway and they're the best I've used out of at least half a dozen different tyres. They're not even that expensive.

Likewise, i more often than not use higher pressures than the placard. Even the tyres max pressure rating can at times be exceeded if you desire because it applies to max load at max speed, so if you aren't doing that the bar is raised. I'm not recommending people do this thought. In most cases the only reasons you would back off from any given pressure in a passenger car is due to too much wear in the centre versus the sides and too rotten ride comfort.

It's not a massively relevant anecdote, but i remember buying some secondhand though-near-new michelins for the back of a vehicle i owned and the max pressure rating was 60psi. So the fitter put 60psi in and didn't tell me. The back of my car wasn't very heavy, and straight after leaving the place there was a roundabout, it was like skating on ice, there was so little tread on the road it must have been shearing off, and the ride was terrible. I fixed that immediately, and ended up using 28psi.

the dodgey c*nts i went to told me to keep it at 34psi all round. Only started putting up to 40 two months ago when i noticed tyre wear on the outisde of the front. Turned out my front wheel alignment (which they were supposed to do when putting my wheels on) was f**k too, and now as a result I have less tread on my front tyres (side) then I do on the back (which I do spin occasionally).

Also I bent/cracked one of my rims and went back to get another one. They told me for 2 months that Speedy was "out of stock" and they were on backorder, and to ring them in a few weeks. After 2 months of this they told me I should probably look at getting another set of wheels, but that most company's "new stock" was available. Ended up ringing Speedy and found out they hadn't even bothered calling...they got quite a rude call last week and I got the rim 3 days later.

I've been told the Nexen N3000's are good and better than the Maxxis

Another vote for Federal here...
I'm running the 595's in 17" and find that they are great, wet and dry.
Good value for $160 each.

I don't know about Nexen road tyres, but i checked out an offroad Nexen tyre about 12 months ago and the rubber had poor memory. I flexed one of the tread blocks and it didn't readily return to it's proper original position. It was dirt cheap, but i decided against it.