Are Michelins really better than the other brands?

I am about to call the corporate office of Wheel Works tire shop here in the Bay Area because they installed a set of 4 Michelin Primacy MXV4s on my car but they will not hold balance. I am a fan of Michelin but this is ridiculous!!! I had the tires balanced for the 9th time yesterday and they were off. I get this nasty shake at 60mph -80mph. Cant go any faster because it feels like I am riding in an earth quake. None of the managers want to warranty this for me at the local chain stores. I went to 3 different ones and they cannot get it to balance. I dont know what the heck the problem is.

Yesterday I wanted all 4 tires balanced and the guy only wanted to do two. The front drivers tire was out 5.5 ozs total and the passenger side was out 3 ozs total. That is a lot of weight. He took it for a test drive and said it was fine. So I assumed it was alright. I drove local since I was at a friends house. When I took the freeway home my car started to shake again at the same speeds.

I already checked myself and had Mercedes mechanics check my suspension and steering system. Everything is new or newish-installed last summer before the tire change. Nothing was loose. This shaking started right away after installing this set of tires. I am beyond ticked ...not sure if its the tires or the guys are incompetent in mounting and balancing them.
 
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It may be uncalibrated balancing machines or it may be the tires. Before I changed tires (if you otherwise like them), I'd get a force balance done. It may simply be that the tires need to be re-clocked on the wheels.
 
Originally Posted By: Hokiefyd
It may be uncalibrated balancing machines or it may be the tires. Before I changed tires (if you otherwise like them), I'd get a force balance done. It may simply be that the tires need to be re-clocked on the wheels.


You are correct on the calibration issues. When my tires were new they would stand on their own and now they just fall when you try to stand them vertical with the rim on. I think they are out of round now. After having it balanced 9 times as of yesterday. Spending 1-3 hrs each time waiting.Thats roughly 27 hours of my life waiting. I am done dealing with this. I got these tires at the end of December last year. Been nothing but trouble. Couldnt even drive my car out of state for my last 2 trips. Had to get a rental because of my tires shaking.

Called Firestone corporate 30 mins ago. They were so nice. They called the District Manager right away and made him promise that he will handle my case to my satisfaction. Glad Wheel Works is owned by Firestone/Bridgestone corp. Wheel Works ignored my email and calls to their corporate office in San Jose, CA.
 
I wanted to put my 2C's in here.
I have had Coopers on my Jeep Wrangler, and my Jeep Cherokee for a couple of years. BOTH have been outstanding tires, and I do go offroad some. I tow a smallish horse trailer with the Chrokee, and they have been great.
Now on my horse trailer, I have Goodyear trailer service tires, and they have been HORRIBLE. And one other thing, did you know trailer tires have NO WARRANTIES! because they sit and don't get rolling as often, they won't warranty.
I have had the Michelin tires, I think they are xts?, on my 1 ton diesel truck, and at 65,000 are still fine. Yes, I will replace in about 10,000 more miles just because they are over 5 yrs old.
So it does depend on the use, the vehicle, and even your driving pattern. ( although most of us say we are the best drivers in the world, RIGHT?)
 
Michelin is NO better nor worse than any other major tire brand. You all have to remember that each tire maker has their excellent performing tire and their average performing tire. No different than any other consumer item. I, for one, have not yet been impressed by ANY Michelin tire and I never purchase them as replacements. BUT - my experiences with Michelins have always been the OEM tire on a new car so I know that those tires are not the greatest anyhow. I am a Goodyear person, and know they make great tires (like the Eagles and MTR's) and they make some poor ones (RTS's come to mind). The last set of Michelins I had came on my 2008 CTS and I COULD not wait to ditch them. I replaced them at 28k miles for Pirelli P Zero Neros and the improvement was night and day. I was going for the Eagle GT's, but they were not available in my size, so it was the Pirellis that were in stock.
 
I have michelin primacy mxv4. It is the best. 55,000 miles already. I can make it to 57,000 miles. Then I will put the same brand again.
 
Originally Posted By: 190E26FTW
I am about to call the corporate office of Wheel Works tire shop here in the Bay Area because they installed a set of 4 Michelin Primacy MXV4s on my car but they will not hold balance. I am a fan of Michelin but this is ridiculous!!! I had the tires balanced for the 9th time yesterday and they were off. I get this nasty shake at 60mph -80mph. Cant go any faster because it feels like I am riding in an earth quake. None of the managers want to warranty this for me at the local chain stores. I went to 3 different ones and they cannot get it to balance. I dont know what the heck the problem is.

Yesterday I wanted all 4 tires balanced and the guy only wanted to do two. The front drivers tire was out 5.5 ozs total and the passenger side was out 3 ozs total. That is a lot of weight. He took it for a test drive and said it was fine. So I assumed it was alright. I drove local since I was at a friends house. When I took the freeway home my car started to shake again at the same speeds.

I already checked myself and had Mercedes mechanics check my suspension and steering system. Everything is new or newish-installed last summer before the tire change. Nothing was loose. This shaking started right away after installing this set of tires. I am beyond ticked ...not sure if its the tires or the guys are incompetent in mounting and balancing them.


I think your tyre may suffer from improper storage that causes the tyre not completely round. The balancing can be improved using more advanced balancing machine that put load on the tyre doing balancing, but it may not solve the problem.
However, time and usage will round this tyre again, it may take up to 1k-1.5k miles to settle in.

So the best is to check the tyre carefully, and put the out of shape tire at the rear while you use it for a while. Of course, if they are willing to change that is the best.
 
Originally Posted By: GMBoy
Michelin is NO better nor worse than any other major tire brand. You all have to remember that each tire maker has their excellent performing tire and their average performing tire. No different than any other consumer item. I, for one, have not yet been impressed by ANY Michelin tire and I never purchase them as replacements. BUT - my experiences with Michelins have always been the OEM tire on a new car so I know that those tires are not the greatest anyhow. I am a Goodyear person, and know they make great tires (like the Eagles and MTR's) and they make some poor ones (RTS's come to mind). The last set of Michelins I had came on my 2008 CTS and I COULD not wait to ditch them. I replaced them at 28k miles for Pirelli P Zero Neros and the improvement was night and day. I was going for the Eagle GT's, but they were not available in my size, so it was the Pirellis that were in stock.


I always get high-performance sport radial (UHP, Max Performance, and sometimes Extreme), the one I noticed with Michelin is they are somewhat easier to be balanced and giving outright performance even they haven't finished scrub in.

The only issue is their price somehow quite expensive, but with the Michelin Pilot range I always end up smiling happy with the performance.
Even though Hankook gives very good performance especially for the bang of the bucks, I find the performance not exceptional and does not really give clear advantage of the performance over comfort ratio. Goodyear seldom sell small tyre with good wet traction (AA rate). Toyo T1R is like jelly when it is new, takes very long to finish scrub in and then turns very bumpy once run-in. Yokohama quite often cracked after years exposed to sun and moisture.

So after many years trying various brands, I still regards Michelin Pilot definitely still one of the better ones.
 
Originally Posted By: kr_bitog
Originally Posted By: 190E26FTW
I am about to call the corporate office of Wheel Works tire shop here in the Bay Area because they installed a set of 4 Michelin Primacy MXV4s on my car but they will not hold balance. I am a fan of Michelin but this is ridiculous!!! I had the tires balanced for the 9th time yesterday and they were off. I get this nasty shake at 60mph -80mph. Cant go any faster because it feels like I am riding in an earth quake. None of the managers want to warranty this for me at the local chain stores. I went to 3 different ones and they cannot get it to balance. I dont know what the heck the problem is.

Yesterday I wanted all 4 tires balanced and the guy only wanted to do two. The front drivers tire was out 5.5 ozs total and the passenger side was out 3 ozs total. That is a lot of weight. He took it for a test drive and said it was fine. So I assumed it was alright. I drove local since I was at a friends house. When I took the freeway home my car started to shake again at the same speeds.

I already checked myself and had Mercedes mechanics check my suspension and steering system. Everything is new or newish-installed last summer before the tire change. Nothing was loose. This shaking started right away after installing this set of tires. I am beyond ticked ...not sure if its the tires or the guys are incompetent in mounting and balancing them.


I think your tyre may suffer from improper storage that causes the tyre not completely round. The balancing can be improved using more advanced balancing machine that put load on the tyre doing balancing, but it may not solve the problem.
However, time and usage will round this tyre again, it may take up to 1k-1.5k miles to settle in.

So the best is to check the tyre carefully, and put the out of shape tire at the rear while you use it for a while. Of course, if they are willing to change that is the best.




I had to call Firestone tires corporate office to get a response out of Wheel Works. Firestone owns Wheel Works, but it took some digging on the internet to find out. They also own Just Tires. Wheel Works corporate office ignored my phone calls and email so I dialed up Firestone to tell their representative about my horrible experience with one of their chain stores. Firestone rep called their District Manager on the phone via 3 way calling and my problem was immediately addressed the same day.

They mounted the high spot of the rim on the high spot of the tire and caused the shaking. Deflated tire and spun it around 180 degrees and fixed most of it. One rim they had to hang 4 weights on the rim to get it to balance right.

From now on I will check to see how many weights it takes to balance a tire on the first try. If it wont zero out, I will ask for a new tire. These people do not want to warranty nothing. So on the 10th balance they fixed it. I always asked the other guys after 3 different shops to deflate and turn the tire on the rim but they all said no, that there was no need. They assumed it was a poor balance job. Been customers of their since the 1990's. This is the last set of tires I will purchase from them.

I like Discount Tires and their great service. Never had issues with them cept maybe one time where the weight was placed slightly right to where it was suppose to be and I had shaking. But that was solved the 2nd time....not 10 balances later. Discount Tires also has a road force balancer that puts the load on the tires as it spins. That is much more accurate than a static balance.

After the poor customer service and treatment by multiple Wheel Works store managers. I do not recommend them to anyone. One store even over torqued a wheel on my friends car which is the exact same model as mine. It was torqued on so bad that standing on the lug wrench would not loosen it. Had to use a 16 foot long pole to get enough torque to turn the lug nut loose. This was done at the San Mateo California Wheel Works. Their manager there told me not to worry about their impact guns over torquing because they cant over torque. [censored]! The wrench stops are out of spec as with their tire balancing machines. They still did it even when I asked for hand tightening using a Snap On torque wrench.

I put over 2000 miles on the tires and they did not straighten out. Car shook like crazy right after I purchased the new Michelin tires. They tried like crazy to blame my suspension or steering components. Too bad everything was brand new Bilstein or factory Mercedes. They looked at it and had nothing to say. It was their bad balancing.
 
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It sounds like the tires needed to be road forced balanced. If the tires had been balanced on a Hunter GSP9700 the first time, you would have never had that problem.
 
Just so we are clear on something:

190E26FTW experienced some .....ah..... Let's call them "out of round" tires. When the shop reoriented the tires 180°, the vibration was fixed. In essence they matched the high spot of the tire with the low spot of the rim (wheel) and by sheer blind luck, the result is a more round assembly. This also means the rims (wheels) were also not too good.

This is pretty much a dimensional kind of thing, not an off balance kind of thing, although stiffness plays a small role here.

We don't know if their balance was off or not.

Those folks need a Hunter GSP9700!
 
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Yup I am a fan of the Hunter Road Force Balancer. I had Bridgestone RE960 tires. They were balanced using the Roadforce and never had any issues. My rims are fine. Just typical wear from weights being taken on and off. No curbing. I have a bunch of Mercedes OEM rims so if I ever had a bent rim, I can get it replaced.

Oh yeah I am still a fan of Michelin. They are so much quieter now that they dont shake! Quieter than Bridestone Re960s by a lot and a little quieter than Bridgestone Serenity on my other cars.
 
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Originally Posted By: The Critic
It sounds like the tires needed to be road forced balanced. If the tires had been balanced on a Hunter GSP9700 the first time, you would have never had that problem.


Turning was required on the wheel. I believe Hunter calls that "Force Match Mounting". My local tire guy says that the machine will only go into that mode if the road force of the assembly is above a certain threshold. I had asked if they could ForceMatch mount all of my tires no matter how "close to round" they were and he told me this. I don't see why the machine wouldn't allow overrides from the standard procedure but I'm not an insider.

I would pay my tire shop a little extra to go through the Force Match process every time even if the assembly didn't "fail". I find that, in general, the "fail" threshold is way too high for me and my vehicle and I can feel the shake on assemblies that most tire shops think are just fine.
 
Originally Posted By: CapriRacer
Just so we are clear on something:

190E26FTW experienced some .....ah..... Let's call them "out of round" tires. When the shop reoriented the tires 180°, the vibration was fixed. In essence they matched the high spot of the tire with the low spot of the rim (wheel) and by sheer blind luck, the result is a more round assembly. This also means the rims (wheels) were also not too good.


This isn't necessarily sheer dumb luck. It shouldn't be that hard for an experience, trained tire tech to find the high spot on a rim. The high spot on a tire is sometimesmarked with a red dot. Failing that a yellow dot will indicate a light area which, if no more sophistication is available, should be matched with the valve stem.

"Most" people don't bother, because "most" drivers in "most" cars can't tell the difference and they eat into shop profits to worry about doing things properly when the end customer won't know the difference.

Hunter and other machines will measure the wheel runout, and assembly runout, and then suggest a rotation of the tire on the wheel to reduce pre-balancing road force as much as possible.

Although the Hunter machines have some tricks up their sleeves, out of round roadforce often cannot be corrected by weight which is what the OP observed. I think one of my Hakkapeliittas (roadforce balanced twice) needs to be rotated on the rim too.
 
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I called around. $120 going rate to have my tires Road Force Balanced. Way too expensive. Next time will shop at Discount Tires as they use the Road Force balancer every time you go in for a tire rotation.
 
Originally Posted By: Craig in Canada
Originally Posted By: The Critic
It sounds like the tires needed to be road forced balanced. If the tires had been balanced on a Hunter GSP9700 the first time, you would have never had that problem.


Turning was required on the wheel. I believe Hunter calls that "Force Match Mounting". My local tire guy says that the machine will only go into that mode if the road force of the assembly is above a certain threshold. I had asked if they could ForceMatch mount all of my tires no matter how "close to round" they were and he told me this. I don't see why the machine wouldn't allow overrides from the standard procedure but I'm not an insider.

I would pay my tire shop a little extra to go through the Force Match process every time even if the assembly didn't "fail". I find that, in general, the "fail" threshold is way too high for me and my vehicle and I can feel the shake on assemblies that most tire shops think are just fine.




It is possible to do force match every tire no matter if the tire is within specs or not. We do this often at our shop. $120 is very high for a road force balance. I would say 65-80$ is more realistic. This tech may not of wanted to do the extra work to force match if a tire was not over the limit. The spec for passenger tires in 26 lbs of Road force or less. At our shop we try to get all "New" passenger tires at 20 or under on the road force.
 
Originally Posted By: FordFocus

It is possible to do force match every tire no matter if the tire is within specs or not. We do this often at our shop.


Anything special I would need to tell the operator to do? They've insisted before that the machine "won't let them" unless the assembly fails.

Quote:

The spec for passenger tires in 26 lbs of Road force or less. At our shop we try to get all "New" passenger tires at 20 or under on the road force.


I can often feel 15+ as "annoying". I applaud you for setting tighter requirements for your shop.
 
They have to press the center menu button until one of the tab options is "measure rim runout". This will put the machine in forcematch mode if the tire isn't over the limit.

Thanks, we have gained a good rep especially in the RV business because of our balancing.

I wish I would of taken some pics to show where in the menu it is, I will try to get some for you.
 
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Originally Posted By: FordFocus
They have to press the center menu button until one of the tab options is "measure rim runout". This will put the machine in forcematch mode if the tire isn't over the limit.

Thanks, we have gained a good rep especially in the RV business because of our balancing.

I wish I would of taken some pics to show where in the menu it is, I will try to get some for you.


Cool, I'm getting a new pair of PS2s mounted tomorrow - this might come in handy
smile.gif
 
Originally Posted By: AlienBug
Originally Posted By: kb01
Which tire brands are considered generic vs. name brand?

There are a lot of Chinese junk tires put on cars at used car lots but there are also many Korean, Japanese, and smaller US tire companies that are subsidiaries of the big players. I'm assuming Capitol, Dayton, Medina, etc. tires are generic but what about Yokohama, Kumho, Toyo, Cooper, Kelly, Dunlop, etc.?


Yokohama and Toyo are quality Japanese brands. Cooper is the last of the American independents and makes solid products. Avon, Dean and Mastercraft are Cooper brands. Dayton is a secondary Bridgestone line. Kelly and Dunlop are secondary Goodyear lines, at least in this country. In most of the rest of the world, Dunlop is owned by Japanese tiremaker Sumitomo. As stated earlier in this thread, Uniroyal and BFGoodrich are both secondary Michelin lines. General is a Continental subsidiary.

Can you tell I researched and bought tires recently?


Michelin also have shares in Hankook, that allow them to manufacture Michelin on Hankook plant
 
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