Good Tyres, Bad Tyres, What’s the Difference anyway?

Because so much of the detail of a tyre is hidden from view, and it doesn’t mean much to the average tyre buyer anyway, the customer feels quite entitled to ask “Why does this tyre cost more than that tyre, and what does the difference mean to me anyway?”

Because more often than not, the tyre is presented in a vertical stack alongside other tyres, the salesperson is quite likely to launch into a comparison of tread and buttress design and width, tread pattern design, accompanied by claims of superior mileage, roadholding, reliability, and “it’s on special this week only” sales presentation. The reason is that either the customer can see these things for themselves, or can conceptualise, or are prepared to accept because the salesman obviously knows more than they do.

The question remains though – “why does this tyre cost more than that tyre?” It’s a valid question from the customer’s point of view. Why do some tyres cost more than others, and is it worth it to buy the more expensive tyre?

So start with “how recent is the design?” Most new tyre designs (sizes, patterns, constructions) are brought into production to meet the requirements of the design engineers of new cars. If they didn’t ask for particular improved tyre attributes, then the design process would stagnate. They drive the improvements, to meet design parameters that they want to incorporate in their new car design. This process goes on worldwide, all the time.

The tyre company, needing their business, designs, qualifies, tests extensively, government certifies their new tyre design, and submit prototypes to the car company for evaluation on their new design car. To this stage, this has cost a great deal of money in technical resources, tooling costs, mould manufacture, and qualifying testing. Then they wait while the car company engineers evaluate their tyres against others from competing tyre companies. So there is no certainty that these prototype tyres will ever see enough of a production run to amortise their development costs.

Remember, each new car has at least 4 new tyres, possibly 5.

So hurrah, at last the car company accepts the tyre for production, and contracts for supply at a particular rate at 12 hour’s notice is arranged, at a price that is barely adequate.

Then, after two to three years, replacement tyres are required by the car buyer from a retail tyre store, in competition with tyres from all over the world in the same size. This is possible because of currency alignments, and because tyres are all made to conform to the same standards regarding size dimensions, speed and load carrying capacity.

But there emerge major differences in appearance, because the car engineers may have specified a quiet riding tyre for a saloon, whereas more eye-appealing tyres from say Europe in the same size may have been designed for a more sporty vehicle; or advertising campaigns, consumer reviews may influence both retailer and buyer; the reputation of the brand definitely carries weight; word of mouth approval; bulk package deals from wholesaler to the retailer; or simply the skill of the salesman in influencing the customer’s choice, based on questioning the customer as to the application of the tyre. Always in the background, is the appeal of low price.

Another 3 years on, another 60000 kilometres, time’s moved on, probably the car’s changed hands, the pattern is no longer available (the moulds do wear out), fashion has changed, tooling costs have been recovered, so the price of the product has been lowered to meet competition and retain market share. Besides, 18 inch wheels have superseded 15 inch- that wasn’t so long ago, was it! Your once newly developed tyre has now become the price leader into the tyre shop so that hopefully you will buy something better, more modern, better performing, more costly.

Tyres are all fat and black, look the same from the outside, they’re almost all truly round these days, and the detail of the construction differences are inside the casing. However, small differences inside add up to small improvements in braking, handling, cornering, steering response (lane changing ability), quietness, and harshness over concrete road joins, durability under high speed/high load conditions, and other measurable improvements. All carry a cost, improvements are small, but when it comes to the crunch, may make a difference to your comfort or wellbeing. Just the design of the tread pattern, the scrambling of the tread elements to break up the noise generated, can add considerably to the cost of the mould. Then you have to have the I.T. expertise to be able to produce the noises the pattern makes on a computer first.

If you buy a bad tyre, it will be with you for a long time.

Tread life isn’t the be all and end all. A survey of Australian motorists some years ago showed that the quality most desired in a tyre was the ability to stop, and handle, in the wet. Perhaps the average motorist is more discerning than they are given credit for!

If you would like to know more, have a look at the blog on www.carbonblack.com.au, and the “All About Tyres” section too.

Here’s the plug! Stuckey Tyre Service

Stuckey Tyre Service is one of Australia’s premier suppliers of car tyres, whether for vintage or motorsport application, or everyday road use. We supply all the major premium tyres. Our sales office and warehouse are located at 828 Sydney Road Brunswick, Australia.

Servicing the demands of Australia’s leading motor racing teams has provided us with unrivalled knowledge of the best performance tyre and wheel combination for every application, road or track. From the most exotic European sports car to the average family sedan, we at Stuckey Tyre Service have a carefully selected range of tyres and alloy wheels to enhance the road performance, safety and appearance of your car.

At Stuckey Tyre Service you can take advantage of the ultimate precision fitting and balancing service where the utmost care is taken with your valuable tyre and wheel purchase. In particular we take great pride in being able to balance a wide variety of specialty wheels including wire wheels for historic applications. The most advanced fitting and balancing equipment is used by skilled technicians whose work is trusted by Australia’s top race drivers at speeds over 300Kpm.

We at CarbonBlack love sending customers to the Stuckey team.

CarbonBlack TyreXchange on A Current Affair

Thanks for those of you who continue to promote CarbonBlack to your friends and to the media!

Last month A Current Affair on channel 9 covered the CarbonBlack’s tyre research and tyre dealer directory. It was all about looking for new tyres and the fact that only few people knew about their tyres. ACA had done an interesting  study showing that the less informed you are the more money you could possibly pay for your tyres.

Then, the show explained how you could research tyres and compare tyre dealers on CarbonBlack.

This is the main reason why tyre dealers join CarbonBlack:

CarbonBlack tyre dealers offer the right price and the right service. They are reputable dealers whose purpose is to satisfy customers rather than to sell by any means. That’s why our dealers accept to share information and to be reviewed on CarbonBlack by their customers. They understand today’s role of social networking as the most effective way to market, and that a longer term customer is worth more than a one-off over-paying one.

Tyre Buyers: On the old subject of price, remember to always compare apples to apples, or tread to tread. When replacing your tyres you get what you pay for.

• Know what you’re after: safety, performance or cost savings – you will not get all three in one tyre
• Do your research on the tyre dealer. Read reviews (eg. on CarbonBlack)
• Ask questions. Be sure you understand what you’re buying.

An informed customer is an empowered one.

The whole segment on CarbonBlack is available in the link below.

http://aca.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=860857

Should Tyres have a use-By Date?

Channel 7’s “Today Tonight” program on Friday 5th December, picked up on earlier publicity originating from an American T.V. program “Twenty-twenty”. An aggrieved customer in South Australia complained that he had been sold Light Truck tyres that were already 14 years old when fitted. One tyre had separated its steel belts from the tread ring, causing damage to his mudguard, and raised the risk of an accident.

The British Rubber Manufacturers have recommended that tyres more than six years old should not be sold, but there is no law requiring this anywhere in the world at present. The American Rubber Manufacturers Association states that there is no scientific evidence to support a six-year limitation on the life of a tyre.

The Channel 7 program cut pieces from the sidewall of the tyre, and did a “tensile test”, pulling on the test piece till it broke. Pieces cut from the (used) 14 year old tyre broke at a lower tensile than from a new tyre. Why they tested the sidewalls, which are a different rubber compound to the tread/steel belt area, it is not known, but it is not surprising that testing two tyres made 14 years apart would give different test results. The reason? The tyres were different!

Tyres are warranted for their life by the manufacturer. Occasionally tyres, like many products, are subjected to a recall program. To enable identification of these, a code is branded into the sidewall, which is used world wide, and is a requirement of the American Department of Transportation. It is called the DOT code. Practically all tyre manufacturers worldwide use this code.

The code details the actual factory in which the tyre was made, the design, and among others items, the last appearing group lists the week and year the tyre was made. 3 digits for the ninetees, four digits for the noughties. Examples then are 489 for the 48th week of 1989, 2604 the 26th week of 2004.

Tyres are generally 6 months to 2 years old by the time they are fitted to your car as replacements. The original equipment tyres are generally one week to six months old, dependent on whether the car was made here, or imported.

The Australian tyre market is so fragmented, with many makes and models of vehicles sold, that the supply chain for replacement tyres is very long, and large stocks are held at distribution points to meet market requirements. For example, the 11 hectare distribution centre at Somerton, Victoria, can hold up to 11 million tyres. Naturally, efforts are made through inventory control to ensure quick turnaround of stock going into the store, to reduce holding costs.

Eventually, tyres are shipped out to your local tyre store. Here they should be stored in racks, in a “cool, dry place”. Many tyre storage areas paint their tyre storage area windows with blue paint to screen out U.V. This is because tyres get harder with age. The vulcanisation process continues at a very slow rate, and protective agents such as antioxidants and antiozidants incorporated into the mix diminish in effectiveness with prolonged storage. Walk into a darkened tyre store, and you can smell the rubber. A somewhat doubtful farming practice used to be that tractor tyres were stored by the farmer to “harden them up”, and possibly improve tread wear. Really, all it did was increase the risk of buttress cracking.

Unless stored correctly (read “All About tyres/Storing a tyre” on our www.carbonblack.com.au site), the tyres will eventually craze or crack most severely where the tyre is resting on the pipe rack. This is because stretched rubber is attacked by ozone in the air. Ozone is generated by electric motors and lightning, so maybe the shop compressor is the culprit. However, tests done in the past have never been able to show that tyres stored this way will not give a satisfactory life. The deformations caused by the pipe rack run out as soon as the tyre gets run in on the vehicle- say 10 kilometres, depending on the temperature.

The real sleeper in all this is your spare wheel. Stored in the boot, or under the tray of a light truck, it is subjected to high summer temperatures, and may lay there undisturbed for six years or more if you don’t have to use it. Our discussion on what to do about that is contained in “All about tyres/original equipment”. Basically, it has missed out on six years of design improvements whilst sleeping in the car boot, or lying in the dealer’s racks waiting for a sale, or in the South Australian’s case, 14 years.

So should tyres have a “Use by Date?” It would appear that provided they have been stored correctly, there is not a problem with tyres encountered in the usual course of trade. Besides, somewhere out of Broken Hill or Wilcannia or somewhere like that, you will be pleased to find that the tyre service has your badly needed tyre, even if it is a bit dusty.

All that applies to tyres also applies to automotive car batteries of course, for all the same reasons, except that a lead acid battery does in fact have a finite life, and has to be stored correctly with its charge maintained until it is sold. The warranty period then kicks in once it is sold.

Pirelli Scorpion ATR Named Year’s Best

Pirelli’s Scorpion ATR has been named the best performing All-Terrain tyre by the highly respected Consumer Reports.

Following on from its earlier success in the European summer tyre tests, ConsumerReports.org rated the Scorpion highest among all tyres tested, based primarily on impressive grip in both dry and wet conditions, excellent dry braking and hydroplaning resistance.

The superior performance in the Consumer Repoarts.org test reinforces the German motoring magazine Auto Bild Allrad finding who also determined the Scorpion ATR to be the leader in its class, stating “Pirelli gets the highest average score for off-road tyres’ quality, demonstrating a very good off-road grip, relative low noise, and street performance with good handling characteristics”.

To achieve this result, Pirelli’s engineers focused their attention on the tread design. The biggest challenge was to maintain the durable all-terrain qualities while at the same time achieving low rolling noise levels. The solution was to integrate into the basic design a new concept of “sweeping” curved grooves. With a strong character derived from its aggressive tread pattern, together with various options for sidewall lettering, Scorpion ATR adds much to the personality of the vehicle on which it is mounted, and in true Pirelli style, with unmatched performance.

Three-times Bathurst V8 Supercar champion Craig Lowndes recently fit Pirelli Scorpion ATR tyres to his Ford Ranger and was instantly impressed.

“The quiet-running, symmetric tread pattern makes driving around town a breeze,” Craig said.

“And because of the shoulder and interlocked tread blocks, when I get off the track up at the farm I still have plenty of directional stability, steering response and off-road traction,” he added.

“Apart from the performance aspects of the Scorpion, they look pretty good too!” Craig beamed.

Consumers Union (CU), the publisher of Consumer Reports.org, is an expert, independent, non-profit organisation whose mission is to work for a fair, just, and safe marketplace for all consumers and to empower consumers to protect themselves. The organisation was founded in l936 when advertising first flooded the mass media. Consumers lacked a reliable source of information they could depend on to help them distinguish hype from fact and good products from bad ones. Since then CU has filled that vacuum with a broad range of consumer information. To maintain its independence and impartiality, CU accepts no outside advertising and no free samples and employs several hundred technical experts to buy and test the products its evaluates.

CarbonBlack’s Independent Tyre Brand Scorecard

As part of its offering to the auto sector, CarbonBlack TyreXchange (CarbonBlack) regularly releases market research reports. Its latest report, the Independent Tyre Brand Scorecard, outlines some notable changes in tyre purchasing behaviour by Australian consumers.

Product or Price?

Contrary to popular service centre opinion, less than 35% of tyre purchasers today are choosing new tyres on price. According to the report, for consumers the number one most important buying factor is product and this has remained consistent over the last twelve months. Factors much lower in priority for consumers were price and convenience, followed by almost negligible influences such as, somewhat surprisingly, the perceived impact of advertising.

But how do they differentiate between products?

Australia is now third in line after the United Kingdom and United States of America in using the internet to search for information and products in the tyre sector. Consumers want to know more, in an unbiased way.
Traditional advertising by the tyre manufacturers has done an admirable job in educating consumers about individual tyre brands. But now consumers are looking beyond brands and need more information on tread patterns, safety and performance attributes and increasingly more important, independent product and service centres reviews.
An interesting outcome of the Independent Tyre Scorecard report revealed that while consumers are on the whole happy with their current tyres, they are not necessarily choosing the same brand when replacing them.
Making tyre product information more easily available online via sites such as the independent directory CarbonBlack and providing product-based information to consumers at point-of-sale is a great opportunity to communicate with tyre consumers. And for those manufacturers reaching out to sections of the market with specific campaigns the feedback was positive. Tyre manufacturers that targeted the luxury car market and increasingly educated female purchaser market were successful – and at the expense of their competitors. Likewise, some manufacturers were much better in reselling the OEM option than others.

CarbonBlack TyreXchange Better Business Tips

The challenge for auto businesses both big and small today is to reach and educate as many of these customers as possible in the lowest cost of sale environment to meet these demands.
With the emphasis from consumers on product and not pricing, use these better business tips to make that sale:

• 1. Differentiate the product’s benefits at point-of-sale.
• 2. Do not underestimate up-sell opportunities. Don’t always offer the cheaper tyre. Seventy percent of the time this is not what customers want.
• 3. Understand each and every customer’s needs and tailor your sales program to meet their requirements.

For CarbonBlack’s Founder, Jodi Stanton the internet is growing in its popularity in educating consumers and subsequently people are seeking better information from tyre manufacturers when it matters most – at point-of-sale.

“Traditional advertising needs to be combined with marketing that focuses on product differentiation, general tyre education and safety programs with retail environments that improve the sales experience for that particular brand.
Over the last twelve months the internet marketplace environment of CarbonBlack has generated over $6 million in sales leads for auto businesses, both big and small. This really is the one space where major retailers and independent providers can both educate customers and generate sales enquiries that are low cost to the business and highly convenient for the customer,”

Stanton concluded.

CarbonBlack at www.carbonblack.com.au can help you provide online marketing tools to reach your valued clientele in a low cost, highly effective environment. Call 02 9369 4662 today to find out how.

Our experts on: Uniform Tyre Quality Ratings

Apart from tyre size branding, many Australian drivers may have noticed other markings on the sidewalls of their tyres with ratings for treadwear, traction and temperature. These Uniform Tyre Quality Grading System (UTQG) ratings are based on rather outdated U.S. legislation which requires all passenger tyres sold in the U.S. to have them.

However such ratings are not a legislative requirement anywhere in Australia. In fact, Australian legislators have shied away from its’ introduction since the information contained in the tyre size provides tyre buyers with more useful information on a tyre’s performance.

I will explain why the UTQG ratings are not so useful.

There are three tyre parameters rated under the UTQG.

• Treadwear ( tread wear compared to a standard tyre, expressed as a percentage. e.g. 200% wears half as fast, so tread wear is twice as good)
• Traction, (AA, A, B or C with AA best)
• Temperature ( A,B,C, with A being best)

All these comparisons are made against a “standard tyre” – now an obsolete design and construction dating back to the period when the law was introduced. All the modern steel belted radials “rate the socks off” this standard tyre.

It is a classic case of technology overtaking legislation but adding to the cost.

The evaluation for treadwear is done on a 640 km road course for a total of 11520 km, – one of the most boring road test drives ever. Every effort is made to keep the testing conditions as standardised as possible.

However, with this type of testing there are variables which may not be taken into account. Such as a heavily siped pattern (many knife slots in the tread design, often only half pattern depth), which will wear faster at first than later, but may give good braking. Also lug design off road patterns may develop unusual wear patterns early in the tread life which even out as the tyre wears down (or not). As these are being compared to a highway rib design on a highway – the comparison may not be valid.

Similarly traction ratings to the standard are made on a highway tyre surface. Off-road tyres generally have a rounder tread profile to reduce the rubber volume in the shoulder/buttress area which helps it run cooler, but promotes faster wear in the centre of the tread design.

Off-road tyres also have a lower pattern to void ratio- the pattern grooves are wider than for a highway design, so initially they too may wear faster than later on in their tread life.

Temperature ratings grade a tyres’ ability to dissipate heat when tested under controlled conditions on a specified indoor laboratory test wheel. However, as speed rating is a much more specific way of expressing a tyres’ ability dissipate heat – size branding will give provide more information than the UTQG rating.

Finally, a word of warning. The Australian Design Rules placard on the vehicle stipulates the minimum speed and load rating of the tyres fitted to the vehicle, both when new, and through State legislation, for the replacement tyres. Lurking always in the background as the enforcer is your insurance assessor. Fitting the wrong tyres may void your insurance cover!

Beating rising fuel costs with energy efficient tyres

Want to beat rising fuel costs? One possible way to do so is to buy more energy efficient tyres. The problem is that most consumers are not well informed about tyre fuel efficiency because there is no standardised labelling or rating scheme. Without knowing, they might choose replacement tyres that are less fuel efficient.

EU tyre manufacturers together with the European Commission are spearheading the move towards energy efficient labelling of tyres, and legislation is currently under discussion to empower consumers to make informed decisons in the replacement tyre market, which apparently represents 75% of market share. This is all part of a broader EU commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 20% by 2020 and to improve fuel efficiency by 20% over the same period. Legislation has also been passed in the US but implementation has been slow.

Currently we are not aware of any plans for such a scheme here in Australia but growing public concern of global warming and the effects of rising fuel prices on hip pockets make it likely that, in the near future, tyre buyers will want to compare tyres – just like they do fridges and washing machines – by their energy rating.

David’s Top Ten Tyre Tips

1. The more components built into a tyre, the more it will cost. They must be there for a reason, such as better stopping distance, cornering, and/or steering response. You may not be able to notice the small improvements, but it may save you from running wide on a curve over the double lines in the rain, or pranging the car in front.
2. The higher the letter in the alphabet after the size brand, e.g. H,V,Z,W,Y,ZR, the more expensive it will be, and better at hanging together under extreme stress, such as high temperatures, speed or lo load.
3. Larger tread blocks (or if they look the same size all over) mean noisier tyres. The more these blocks are cut up by surface (half depth) knife slots, the better it will be in the wet and the faster they will wear up until they are about half worn. After that, who knows?
4. Wear vs. wet road holding. Claims that the tyre will outwear anything else means the more likely the wet road holding will be poor, because you can’t have both at optimum at the same time.
5. The lower the tyre profile e.g. 55 down to 35 or lower, the faster the steering response will be, even to the stage that it just might be too twitchy for an average driver to cope with. Lower profiles also mean that more components should be built into the lower sidewall to stiffen the walls and improve the steering response. This excludes scuff ribs or spray deflectors on the outside of the walls – added to protect the sidewalls.
6. The higher the air pressure, the lower the fuel consumption (generally less than 5% improvement), the harder the ride and the faster the steering response.
7. The higher the number after the size brand e.g. 92 to 96 or similar, the more load the tyre can carry at higher pressures without cutting into its reserves of casing strength and durability.
8. The wider the tread, the more the centre of the tread design has to be opened up with grooves to channel water from under the tyre, otherwise you can aquaplane. Overall, there might not be any more rubber there after all but it looks great, and gives the salespeson a “point of difference” on which to sell.
9. The wider the tread, the more the salesperson will try to sell it to you, because you can both see that it’s wider. Besides, it’s the only part of the tyre that you can see in the tyre rack!
10. The wider the tread, the more rubber is over the edges of the steel belts, putting more stress and heat there, which has to be compensated for in the design by adding more components to the tyre. So it’s back to 1!

Michelin leads in online exposure from US study

A recent study done by Envisional and published in the USA’s Tyres & Accessories ranks tyre brands’ online presence in terms of both prominence and sentiment.

According to the study, Michelin was found to have the most “online prominence” of all tyre brands, a position it has held onto strongly since 2005 when the survey began. Bridgestone had the biggest gain from last year in prominence, jumping from fifth to second place.

The second, and perhaps more innovative survey, was Envisional’s “Sentiment Index”. Also won by Michelin, this survey looks at positive or negative references across the internet to the brand. It’s an interesting study as it does not measure how much the firms invested in online advertising, or even how much exposure they had – rather it looks at how ordinary people are talking about them. Blogs, reviews and public messageboards are all scanned, giving a perceptive look into the minds of consumers. It makes a big difference, as well – in 2005 public sentiment lifted Pirelli from fifth to first in the online rankings.

Of course, we’ve got our own report – the CarbonBlack Tyre scorecard we mentioned a few posts ago. The CarbonBlack Tyre Scorecard is full of valuable insights based on prominence in the Australian online market. Michelin is in the top 5 in terms of ratings, recommended tyres and higest online sales, but has a few rising contenders. We will be reporting more specifically on online exposure in our upcoming reports We are quite excited about our upcoming series.

More information about the Envisional report here: http://www.reifenpresse.de/CDML007/asia/gast/detail.php?t=akt&tk=1480019&RecID=14035&abo=1