Hi

I'm new to the forum, so sorry if this topic has been covered before....

I have a 2litre TDI Elegance - 11 plate - I bought it with factory fitted Bridgestone Turanza ER300 tyres. I wasn't happy as I'd had a set of Bridgestones 2 Octavia's earlier, with a load of noise problems and more alarmingly fidgeting all over the road, which the salesman selling me my latest car assured me was just unlucky - I must have had a bad tyre amongst the set of tyres. The dealer I bought the original Octavia from replaced those tyres for Dunlops and I had no further problems - which brings me to my latest Oci.......

The car was bought specifically for my long journeys over to France 3-4 times a year. I use the autoroute-the car is a great touring car - and travel on cruise at a constant 130 kmh (82 mph) - the speed limit over there.

I have been experiencing some tyre vibration problems from buying the car. Although the vibration did not come up through the steering wheel, I had them balanced, but still no better. Sometimes from cold until they warm up, when they smooth out, but my latest and more alarming experience was after driving at 130kmh for around 3 hours, we stopped for lunch at a service station. On setting off on our journey again, I have never experienced such violent front end vibrations- I was scared as hell and thought the front end was going to drop off, or we were going to have a serious accident. We pulled over onto the hard shoulder and checked visually whether there was anything obvious with the suspension, or front end - but nothing obvious (I'm a former motor engineer by trade). We limped along the autoroute to the next service station and parked up to let the tyres cool down. On setting off again some 30 minutes later, the problem was still there, albeit not as obvious, and once we'd travelled for a number of miles the vibration smoothed out again.I am convinced this is a tyre problem.

I have had the car back into the dealer in Chesterfield - they cannot find anything wrong with the car / suspension / front end or tyres. I thought they wouldn't as they could not recreate the speed legally in the UK, nor the driving times.

I have written to the less than helpful Customer Services team, who have told me that there is nothing that can be done. They did suggest they would contact the dealer to look at some sort of 'good will' gesture and would contact us again within 48 hours - I ended up having to contact them again a week later, to be told the tyres are now out of warranty, and anyway if the car breaks down on the continent its covered by the breakdown cover that goes with the Oci. So I want to set off on such a long journey knowing i may / probably will have the problem again, be at best inconvenienced by being towed to the nerest garage and have no car for days on end - or at worst have a serious accident and end up injued or dead? get real. I was also told by customer services that the car is designed to be driven at 70 mph!!!!!!Strange that as I thought the 2 litre 6 speed engine would be well be well on top of its job for long journeys, and the tyres are speed rated to 149mph!!!!!!!

In my opinion, the tyres are not fit for purpose and I will be contacting trading standards. I guess I'm also going to have to stump up £400 plus for a set of new tyres for my own peace of mind / safety. But I am just wondering if anyone else has experienced anything similar and had any luck getting any sort of recompence from Skoda? Or any other suggestions as to the problem?

The tyres now have 10k on them. The inflation pressures were correct for the journey and the wheel nuts all at the correct tension - I'm meticulous in checking that each time we set off for France, so that wasn't the problem.

Welcome to Briskoda (

Have you tried complaining to Bridgestone rather than Skoda UK?

Hi

Thanks for your reply and we are going to complain to Bridgestone, but as Skoda supplied the car with the tyres on, I thought it correct to ask Skoda to deal with the problem first. I'll contact Bridgestone if I get no joy from Skoda. Just wondering if anyone else has had a similar experience?

Thanks a lot

We had Turanzas fitted to a Mazda 3, and although they lasted forever (48K miles), they were noisy, tramlined, awful in the wet and the car (when we sold it) seemed to vibrate as well. We have Barum Bravuris 2 tyres fitted to our Octy 1.9, and they seem to be rather good.

Have you tried swapping them front to back? I currently have one pair of Turanzas and while I don't like them, they aren't causing any problems. Besides the noise.

I had those on mine, although they last long, just changed the front ones with +53k.

Good= last long, sidewall protection, good on dry

bad= noisy, very noisy, must have been one of the worse tyre I had in wet.

Now changed to Goodyear EficientGRIP