Current situation; fronts need replacing through normal wear, and the rears make a horrendous noise but have loads of tread left. The rear nearside is obviously sawtoothed, and is a directional tyre. The offside tyre, which is older than the nearside, has no sawtoothing that I can feel.

 

I seem to recall reading elsewhere that directional tyres are more prone to sawtoothing. Don't know if that's true or not. If it's not true then for some reason one has sawtoothed but the other hasn't, despite being older.

 

I'm assuming that if I put the rears on the front, the noise will be simply transferred to the front?

 

Can anyone recommend a tyre that doesn't cost the earth, that doesn't suffer from sawtoothing? I did think about putting this into a more general part of the forum, but I guess the Superb has its own particular foibles.

 

I'm on 18" wheels, if this helps.

I have never heard the term 'sawtoothing', can you explain what it means please?

My 17" factory fitted Pirelli Cinturato's saw-toothed on the rear but being a tight Yorkshire man I ran them to the wear bars and just put up with the dreadful drone!

I have never heard the term 'sawtoothing', can you explain what it means please?

 

Uneven tyre wear.

 

It is a huge problem on the MkII Octavia but does seem to plague some MkII Superbs too...

 

http://www.briskoda.net/forums/topic/114075-enormous-and-dangerous-wear-on-the-inside-of-the-rear-tyres/?hl=+saw%20+tooth

Yes, if you move the rears to the front the noise will move too.  Try increasing the tyre pressures to around 36-38psi.  It will help.  Ideally you would reverse the direction of rotation but that isn't an option in your case.  Personally, I'd put up with the noise but I'm a tightwad and do a lot of miles

 

For the new tyres, try Michelin PS3 or Goodyear Assymetric2.

 

Get a good alignment done.  I assume the Superb has similar rear suspension to the Octavia so get them to set the rear wheel camber as upright as possible within the manufacturers specification.  Get them to set the toe-in to the minimum setting as well (about 2mm toe-in).

 

After you've got tyres & alignments sorted out you should get the tyres cross-rotated every 10,000km (assuming non-directionals).

I have never heard the term 'sawtoothing', can you explain what it means please?

May also be referred to as 'feathering'.  Uneven wear basically as mentioned above often caused by misalignment and suspension issues but also other factors such as tyres not manufactured correctly in the first place.