Tire time, yecch!

[Brett Dikeman]

At 9:20 PM -0500 4/22/02, Todd Young wrote:
>Just a note to those of you running Dunlop D60A2 tires.
>Dunlop no longer makes them.
>The tire has been redesigned and is now called the SP Sport A2.
>
>Personally, I've had good luck with Dunlop tires and will probably get the SP
>Sport A2 this fall when I replace my current D60A2 tires.

I was pretty happy with my D60A2s on the 200q20v.  Not bad, except in
the snow, which they were worse than my bought-used Firehawk SZ50s on
17x8.5 rims, it seems.  When I mentioned this to people, the
collective answer seemed to be "Yeah, no @#%!, D60A's suck in the
snow."

In general, I found them pretty predictable...and they always made a
racket before they were about to let go, so I never really got myself
into -too- much trouble(easy to do in a chipped 200q20v)...I guess
you could call them an "easy to read" tire.

I'd like to remind folks that we go through these tire threads...
every
single
season
every
single
year

The best way to go about this is to place a couple calls, and see
what local tire places have in stock for your desired tire
size/intended use, surf Tire Rack, Discount Tire, etc...if anything,
Tire Rack's ratings system is pretty good, just remember most people
tend to factor what kind of tire they're using into a particular
rating(Ie, "for a summer tire, it's pretty good in the snow", not
"this is a terrific tire for the snow" etc :-)

   See if the tire's qualities, as described by the manufacturer or
reseller, sound about what you're looking for, and then do the
homework with searches online, a trip to the bookstore for the latest
C&D or R&T, that sort of thing...and see if the tire measures up to
the marketing.

   Try to remember that while places like Tire Rack etc are trying to
sell you a tire, they're probably at least a little bit interested in
-continuing- to sell you tires, too.  Therefore, you're probably not
going to get handed a really crappy recommendation, since if the
tires annoy you, you won't trust them again and they'll never see you
again(plus you'll tell all your friends, etc...I saw a good sign in a
small services company that hung over the sales dept, that said,
among other things, "1 angry customer = 10 lost customers", or
something to that effect.)

Hope this helps folks now that summer is...uh...here(it just snowed,
a little bit north of here today.)

Brett
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"They that give up essential liberty to obtain temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Ben Franklin
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