as billy said the mythos are a great underated tyre, i had some when i was living in italy and they do last but are not well known here.

I always used to run toyos t1s then the t1-rs however they are not the best lasting tyre but as an allrounder are great.

Dare i say......the sessantas are....from personal experience a better tyre and got voted second in the autocar review behind the eagles so cant be bad!

they are noticably better rated for braking distance than the khumos/fakens iirc.

I've got the Kuhmo KU31's all round, nice quiet and grippy, seem to be last ing quite well too. about 12K done and I reckon a good 4mm left on the fronts, and 6 or so on the rears. and the're resonably cheap

cheers sweedish, I read a review on them sayin how good they are lol, i think they came as the originals on the crossfire over here?

My neighbours own a classic VW workshop and a General Garage that specialise in suspension setup for track and fast road (very wide variety of cars from MGB GT's to Mitsubishi EVO's) and they have the Hankooks on all of their vehicles(road and track) and swear by them, added to the test results, the price and how they are on the car I would definately buy again (need to pickup one more next month for the front).

one thing I have learnt is to take a printout of the Camskill price to your local tyre centre and get them to pricematch means you get support should anything go wrong with the tyre(no hassle of "we didnt supply the tyre, we only fitted it so we can't fix it") and the best possible price as well.

Hankooks are definitely worth consideration, missed those off my post earlier. The reviews on the V12 Evo certainly look positive.

Steve

every how many Km do you have to rotate tires?

I have put 20,000 Km on mine .

you dont have to rotate them at all mate, just makes them last longer if you do and means that norm you buy all 4 in one go.

or dont swap and jus buy fronts then pos have to buy all the next time?

billy

every how many Km do you have to rotate tires?

I have put 20,000 Km on mine .

You don't have to swap tyres. If you want to do so, that's your decision, but make sure you're not reversing the direction of rotation on directionals (read the tyre walls, not all directionals are obvious V-groove tyres like Toyo's are). Or swap front to rear same side when the frons are about half-worn.

I've just fitted another set of T1-R's on my vrs (now had 11 in total, due to a puncture), and I got 11800 miles out of the last fronts and nearly double that out of the rears (only had to change on of them early due to the puncture but the other was the original from the first set of 4) so I'd say you either have a very tyre punishing style of driving, your car's got a setup problem of you had a duff batch to only get 5k out of the fronts.:confused:

Also had Kumho's on both my old escort and SWMBO's corsa and they were utter rubbish - always tramlining and horrible grip so much so I had the escort into the garage several times to check the suspension over as it was pretty near dangerous to drive on. Then I fitted a set of Yokohama A539's (I think) and it was like a new car.

I'd have fitted them to the vrs if they had the size and were better recommended than the toyo's.

And believe me when I say I drive my vrs like it was meant to be driven - HARD!!!

Just my two penneth worth...

Also had Kumho's on both my old escort and SWMBO's corsa and they were utter rubbish - always tramlining and horrible grip so much so I had the escort into the garage several times to check the suspension over as it was pretty near dangerous to drive on. Then I fitted a set of Yokohama A539's (I think) and it was like a new car.

I'd have fitted them to the vrs if they had the size and were better recommended than the toyo's.

And believe me when I say I drive my vrs like it was meant to be driven - HARD!!!

Just my two penneth worth...

I think this proves that we all have different experiences some good and some bad and not all tyres work in the same way on all cars, ultimatley it is your decision and not a decision to be taken lightly as they are all that keep you/family/friends out of the ditch etc.

And the Yokohama A539's were ace (had them on my xsara) but I couldn't find any in the 225/45/17 size for my Octi vRS at the time :(

Well this is by far the most informative tyre thread I've ever read (if I do say so myself ). Great to see some real experiences and info and not just fanboy-style opinion.

Thanks everybody. I think I'm gonna go with the Hankooks based on price, reviews, recommendations and the fact that they seem to be an interesting and slightly different choice when compared with all the more obvious things. Then I'll see about getting my tracking looked at. I'll let you know if I hear anything back from Toyo. In the meantime, do people think I should rotate my remaining Proxes to the front, or just stick the Hankooks straight on the front?

So long as the tread on the fronts are legal mate and you got 1-2mm legal tread then yea I would jus to even them out, it is summer now so wont harm it and that way you can use them over summer then have fresh good ones for winter.

I personaly move the good tyres to the front as they are the ones that need to get the power to the road and the rear jus follows lol. I dont see why yuo put good ones on the rear? if they not the driving wheels.

billy

So long as the tread on the fronts are legal mate and you got 1-2mm legal tread then yea I would jus to even them out, it is summer now so wont harm it and that way you can use them over summer then have fresh good ones for winter.

I personaly move the good tyres to the front as they are the ones that need to get the power to the road and the rear jus follows lol. I dont see why yuo put good ones on the rear? if they not the driving wheels.

billy

I believe that accepted wisdom is that new tyres should always go on the back as it's more important to have grip there from a safety point of view. I'm sure I've read that it's easier to regain control of the front end, due to it being the driven end, than the rear. No doubt someone will be along to make that make sense shortly!

My remaining Proxes on the rear have a reasonable amount of tread left, probably 4 or 5mm.

My experience is that the vRS has a very healthy appetite for front tyres at the best of times, mine certainly has

The ones I've tried (225/45/17):

Older GDS3 Goodyear F1 - good dry grip, good wet grip, relatively poor wear rate (10K at a push)

Goodyear F1 assymetric - very good dry grip, good wet grip, very poor wear rate - heading for 7-8K I'd say)

Falken 452 - surprisingly good dry grip, ok wet grip, pretty good wear (13-14K from memory) probably one of the best value options out there.

Toyo T1R - fair dry grip, fair wet grip, wear rate unknown, they weren't on long enough to tell.

Bridgestone RE070 - stunningly good dry grip, mediocre wet grip, not sure of wear rate as I was using them in unfair conditions to compare - easily the best road tyre I've ever had on any car, but very stiff so compromises the ride a bit if that bothers you.

Kumho Ecsta 31 - generally ok, nothing exciting, ok wear (not sure of figures as they were on the car when I got it)

As far as fitting best tyres on the rear - complete load of tosh IMO. All things being equal the back just gets dragged around, I've yet to get the back of mine loose even when severely provoked on track conditions with deliberately lower quality tyres on the back compared to the front. If the rear tyres are really that bad to be compromising grip and letting the back go, then they want throwing in the bin not fitting on the front ;-)

The front tyres are always doing twice as much work as the back especially with the torque delivery characteristics of the vRS cars.

:iagree: - at least as far as tread depth goes. I did once manage to get oversteer by having better tyres on the front, but that was front Toyo Proxes CF-1 and rear Barum "Brilliantus", on a dry road so we can rule out the effects Michelin's video illustrates.

Also ask yourself this - when was the last time you did an emergency stop on a flooded turn in a car with no ABS?

As far as fitting best tyres on the rear - complete load of tosh IMO. All things being equal the back just gets dragged around, I've yet to get the back of mine loose even when severely provoked on track conditions with deliberately lower quality tyres on the back compared to the front. If the rear tyres are really that bad to be compromising grip and letting the back go, then they want throwing in the bin not fitting on the front ;-)

The front tyres are always doing twice as much work as the back especially with the torque delivery characteristics of the vRS cars.

:iagree: as well.

I've not had lift-off/braking oversteer since a mk1 Golf in about 1993- on god-knows-what crap tyres, and I generally replace tyres just as they wear- so 2-3 sets on the front, one on the rear, then repeat. Even provoking it with my A3 with rear pressures on full load failed to result in the back stepping out.

Given that practically every FWD car (which in itself means the mjaority of cars on the road) will understeer naturally, I'd rather have the front go where I point it.

thought so lol,

cheers for that, dont think ill be changin my ways lol, end of the day its up to you what you want to do.

The point of having the new tyres on the rear has nothing to do with handling in any way!!!! it is mainly to do with the concequence of having a Blowout. A blowout of the front is relatively easy to control, as you (normally) have power steering to help you keep it straight while you slow down. A rear blowing out is the most dangerous thing that can happen. look at some of the videos of rear blowouts on youtube!! I saw an article on fifth gear about tyres(they did a whole show I think) and even Tiff lost it really quickly with a rear blowout. Obviously with runflats its not so important. HTH (PS I always though it was better to put new tyres on the front as well, but not anymore:D)

:sigh: So when was the last time you, or anyone you know, actually had a high speed blow-out? I've just worked it out for me, and it was Summer 1970.

and how does putting a "newer" tyre on the back solve that situation? once every 25 years a blowout may occur if you're unlucky, every mile the car does brings the potential for grip and steering ability to be way more important (IMO )

Each to their own, everyone is free to make their choice ultimately, but blind "recommendations" from semi-official sources, without reference to the individual type/make/condition of tyres fitted front and back just doesn't make sense.

Fitting your new high performance tyres on the back and putting 3/4 worn romanian budget specials on the front because someone says thats how it should be just makes no sense.

Maragoni Mythos are great tyres i've had a few sets of those has 15-20k out of one set on the front and that was with my style driving

Right, well I'm glad we cleared up the front/back issue. Can't remember where I read it, but I do now remember it was definitely to do with recovering control in an emergency (such as a blowout I suppose). Makes sense that the front is where you need the grip though. Thanks folks.

In the meantime, I spoke with Alan Meaker (Technical and Motorsport Manager - Toyo) today, following my email. So thanks Steve for the suggestion. He sounds like a spot on bloke and agreed with me that it seemed odd. He has said that if I were closer, he would come and have a look himself, but has in any case asked if he can have them back at the factory once they're off my car. No promises, but they can investigate from there.

I'm very impressed with that and his whole attitude was extremely helpful, so we'll see where that gets me. In the meantime, I've yet to find somewhere good down here, that will properly look at my car in detail for any alignment issues and fit some Hankooks :(

Good. Top marks to Toyo for that. It's only that I've dealt with them before, with technical questions and a few early niggles on an early set of T1-Rs and found them to be helpful and proactive. So good to see that's still the case

Nothing ventured, nothing gained and all that. And if a company doesn't know about a problem, they can't be expected to do anything about it

Steve

I thought the putting new tyres on the rear thing was because tyres that have been on the rear are basically unworn and new but without the lack of grip you get from a new tyre.

So that in the period where your tyres "bed in" they do it on the back and the tyres you have up front (the ones that used to be on the back) are as near as makes no difference new, just bedded in...

Beyond that the only experience I have with the vRS is this:

Having four different chinese tyres with four different levels of wear and two different sizes gives you terrible grip and having a couple of T1Rs is better than that.

Not very helpful, I know.

:sigh: So when was the last time you, or anyone you know, actually had a high speed blow-out? I've just worked it out for me, and it was Summer 1970.

I agree. I have (thankfully) never had a blowout or even seen someone have a blowout, but I have seen the mess they make when they go spinning all over the M4. I dont believe where you put the new tyres makes as much of a difference as making sure you are running at the correct tyre pressures as low pressure causes heat, and lots of it as your speed increases. I had a puncture the other day and had to drive 6 miles to get home (my pump was broken as well - lucky eh?) even driving at 25-30 all the way the tyre was cooking by the time I got home. So good quality tyres at the correct pressures and you should be fine where ever you put them (maybe not on your head though)