Tyres

[peterholden]

The Michelin tyres on our 3 year old Outlook are almost 4 years old according to the date stamps on the sidewalls. they are showing signs of cracking at 30000 miles. When it was serviced in December the garage flagged up the problem and said that it could be a possible MOT failure in March.

I am getting conflicting advice from local tyre suppliers, one says reinforced tyres another says 6ply but they are all telling me that 6 ply tyres are in short supply uless youy buy expensive ones like Michelin.

The tyre details on the current tyres are 175,65,R14. C88/90T.

Our Berlingo car is fitted with 175,70,R14.

Ant please can you recommend any budget tyres and would it be worth changing the profile from 65 to 70.

Thanks

Peter Holden

[ant]

Hi Peter.
The most important numbers to worry about with your tyres are the max carrying capacity, this will be marked on the side wall. You then need to find the max back axle wt on your chassis plate ( probably 1080Kg on your van), then halve that figure ( 540Kg). Providing the tyre you buy will carry at least half the max back axle wt it doesn't matter if it's 6ply or 8ply. It's not always easy finding tyres that suit, for some reason the availability varies through the year. The last batch I bought ( I tend to buy 10 at a time) were Firestone tyres, before that they were Pirelli, before that Debeka ( budget tyre but very good tread pattern much like a Pirelli). You have to check each time you buy tyres as the same size, name, and rating( the 88/90T bit) can some times only have a max carrying capacity of about 525Kg, I've been caught out several times in the past. I doubt you'd have any real problems if you were a few Kg short but in the event of an insurance claim you may leave yourself open to not being covered if an eagle eyed loss adjuster is well informed on the wts issue.
Good Luck.
Ant

[peterholden]

Hi Ant

Thanks for the information.

I have managed to find some Barum Vanis tyres on the tyre shopper web site at £44 each. They appear to be the Internet arm of National Tyres. My local NT does the same tyre at £56 and so it is a good saving.

Can I please ask a question about valves. Are the normal rubber valves OK or should I have steel cored valves fitted?

Thanks

Peter

[ant]

Hi Peter.
I use the rubber valve, there are two lengths, go for the longer one if you use wheel trims and the short one if you don't.
Thanks
Ant

[aggsnrog]

I am now running without trims. When I had new tyres fitted last year they put weights on the outside of the rims, which prevented the trims clipping into position. Having used a size 10 to encourage one to clip on properly, which cracked the trim beyond repair, the supervisor told me I should try different trims! My predecessor had fitted off-the-shelf trims, but passed on the originals. Neither fitted. Thanks, KwikFit!

[peterholden]

One of the first jobs when we got our Outlook was to remove the wheeltrims. It is easier to keep the wheels clean and the trims ARE NOW ON OUR berlingo car to hide the horrible black wheels. (the original berlingo trims on the car were well past their sell by date and looked awful.