Goodyear Eagle F1 Tyres

I'd known my rear tyres were getting low since Christmas, but when I came to check them late into Feb, they were really getting low, 3 Brucey bonus points each on my license low.

With my wallet already wincing, I went on camskill.co.uk and priced up a pair of rear tyres. I didn't have the best of experiences with the Falken FK452's I put on a year ago. Initially they were excellent, but they soon lost grip and weren't really inspiring in the wet, towards the end of their life they became quite loud too.

Wanting to avoid the Falken's, I looked further down the list i.e. the more expensive end of the list. I picked out a few options that I could justify the price of (there were Yokohama's at £220 each, which is too rich for me).

The short list was as follows;

• Falken FK453 - £124.20 (New version of the FK452, stick with the devil you know?)
• Vredestein Ultrac Sessanta - £129
• Dunlop SP SportMaxx TT - £145.50
• Goodyear Eagle F1 Asymmetric 2 - £148.40

Now that the EU have brought in the new rating sticker it gives you a starting point to compare each tyre, however, comparing on just the stats alone didn't really help, each tyre had it's positives and negatives.

For more info on the new EU Tyre Label, this article on blackcircles is very good - Closer Look at the EU Tyre Labelling. 

Next step was to hit the review sites, the best one I found was tyrereviews.co.uk. It gives you the option to compare reviews on tyres that have been fitted to your car, as tyres can perform differently on individual cars. I've linked to the tyrereviews.co.uk site for each of the tyres in the list above. It showed that the Falkens really aren't liked, many quoting the same issues I've had. Almost all the negative reviews were quoting tram-lining, something I had suffered in a big way. Falken's crossed off, next up was the Vredestein's. I'd not really heard of this brand before, but the reviews weren't too bad, so a maybe. The Dunlop's got equally as bad reviews as the Falken's, so that's another off the list. Finally the Goodyear's, to my surprise these tyres got absolutely gleaming reviews, with 94% of 131 people saying they would buy them again. 

The two options then, Vredestein vs Goodyear. Back to the stats, according to camskill.

The Goodyear's were better in all areas but the noise, despite noise levels being important, I thought that performance should be considered more highly, and with the highest wet grip rating you can get, I was leaning toward the Goodyear's. Tipping the balance, the fuel efficiency is better on the Goodyear's too, with fuel only going up in price I hoped this might benefit in the long run. 

Goodyear's ordered on a Sunday night, delivered on the following Tuesday, thanks to camskill's fantastic service. 

The tyres looked really nice when they arrived, and even better, they are actually rated C for fuel efficiency, not E as it said on camskill, result!

Next day I took all the wheels off and cleaned them ready for the new tyres. Disaster struck when I took the front wheels off, they were completely warn down on the inside edge. 

Something not quite right here then...

I took the new tyres to Selectatyre to get them fitted, whilst they were fitting the rears I spoke with one of the staff members. He said it was most definitely alignment and camber causing the wear problem. Needless to say I needed two new front tyres as well, so I got them to quote me a price on the Goodyear's. They quoted a price about £10 more than camskill, so for convenience I accepted and got them to order two in for the next day and booked in for a tracking/alignment/camber adjustment.

The next day I went back and they did an assessment of the current set up. Bad news, the camber was way out of wack, about 2° outside of the allowable tolerance zone. The rear wheels were cambered so that the top of the wheel was further outboard, completely the opposite of how it should be, the fronts were the opposite, too far in at the top. All four wheels were toe'ing in. 

All adjustments made, the guy came back with the readings, 3 of the wheels were perfect, but the rear right had reached maximum adjustment for camber and was just outside the allowable tolerance zone, he said this was the best he could do and was a massive improvement over what it was, so I went with that. You can see the final outcome below.

All in all it was an expensive week, £600+...but by god it made a difference. The car rolls far, far better, so I'm hoping that will lead to the fuel efficiency gains the EU label stated I should see. 

On my first country lane twisty drive into work it was immediately evident the handling had improved considerably. The car is now cornering like it's on rails, far better than it has ever handled under my ownership. Tram-lining has reduced significantly, hardly pulling to one side at all when crossing a white line in the road etc.

Finally then, the road noise. What a difference, it is remarkable how much quieter they are over the previous set of Falken's.

I couldn't recommend the Goodyear tyres more, they really were worth that extra over the Falken's. However, the alignment and camber fix has made the biggest improvement, if you think you might have problems with your car in this area, it is money well spent fixing it.