CR reports of counterfeit tires on the market

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I have a set of "Aspen touring A/S" that are sold as "Doral" brand on the website mentioned above, mine say made in Thailand by Sumito. As a side note in the past Les Schwab tires has sold Pegasus tires, not sure if they still do.
 
Originally Posted By: Corollaman
I have a set of "Aspen touring A/S" that are sold as "Doral" brand on the website mentioned above, mine say made in Thailand by Sumito. As a side note in the past Les Schwab tires has sold Pegasus tires, not sure if they still do.



Are you sure it's not sumimoto?

They are decent tires for the money. Not any worse than nitto's are.
To start with I've never seen a new decent tire sold for 50 bucks. For 50 bucks the best I can do is take offs from a wrecker,so that in itself is a clue to me.
I spend a lot of time behind the wheel so I try to buy the best quality I can afford. That being said quality costs money.
Buying from somewhere you trust is also important. Buying online may save a buck but you can't inspect the tire prior to paying,which I refuse to do.
Before new tires are mounted I do my homework. And never buy right now. I shop around,I inspect the tires myself prior to install and I buy the warranty.
Tires are the only thing I buy the extra warranty on. If I didnt I could easily spend 1000 a year for nail punctures.
The fact that they are Chinese doesn't bother me. Just because that's where they come from DOESNT automatically mean they are garbage.
That bring said I'd rather see a different country of origin. North America being first,and I'll pay more for that.
 
Originally Posted By: dishdude
I found some Pegasus tires for my car, $48! I can't imagine how bad these tires are.




Buy 'em, try 'em, and let us know...
eek.gif
 
Originally Posted By: Clevy
Originally Posted By: Corollaman
I have a set of "Aspen touring A/S" that are sold as "Doral" brand on the website mentioned above, mine say made in Thailand by Sumito. As a side note in the past Les Schwab tires has sold Pegasus tires, not sure if they still do.



Are you sure it's not sumimoto?

They are decent tires for the money. Not any worse than nitto's are.
To start with I've never seen a new decent tire sold for 50 bucks. For 50 bucks the best I can do is take offs from a wrecker,so that in itself is a clue to me.
I spend a lot of time behind the wheel so I try to buy the best quality I can afford. That being said quality costs money.
Buying from somewhere you trust is also important. Buying online may save a buck but you can't inspect the tire prior to paying,which I refuse to do.
Before new tires are mounted I do my homework. And never buy right now. I shop around,I inspect the tires myself prior to install and I buy the warranty.
Tires are the only thing I buy the extra warranty on. If I didnt I could easily spend 1000 a year for nail punctures.
The fact that they are Chinese doesn't bother me. Just because that's where they come from DOESNT automatically mean they are garbage.
That bring said I'd rather see a different country of origin. North America being first,and I'll pay more for that.


I have Nitto CrossTeks that are made in the USA. They are an excellent tire. They were not cheap.
 
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Originally Posted By: stephen9666
Originally Posted By: mrsilv04
This could explain that horrid set of Michelin LTX M/S tires that I owned...


Well, that seems like a little bit of a stretch, unless you bought those Michelins from a sketchy source...


Is Sam's Club considered 'sketchy'?

Yes, it was a stretch. But I am still baffled as how the LTX M/S tires that everyone loves and swoon about... were so sucky on my Silverado. Maybe I had a counterfeit set.
21.gif
 
Originally Posted By: mrsilv04
Originally Posted By: stephen9666
Originally Posted By: mrsilv04
This could explain that horrid set of Michelin LTX M/S tires that I owned...


Well, that seems like a little bit of a stretch, unless you bought those Michelins from a sketchy source...


Is Sam's Club considered 'sketchy'?

Yes, it was a stretch. But I am still baffled as how the LTX M/S tires that everyone loves and swoon about... were so sucky on my Silverado. Maybe I had a counterfeit set.
21.gif



I hated them also so you are not alone. Mine were from costco however. I ended up taking them off a selling them after about 20k miles.
 
There have been reports of dry rot on more recent manufacturing dates of certain Michelin tires. Not saying this is the case with Michelin, but I worked in distribution and sales for 25 years,and many times a manufacturer would make a "product change" i.e. changing some ingredients in that product and not informing anyone and once it hits the field the changes are evident. Again, I am not saying this is the case for Michelin but it's just food for thought.
 
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Originally Posted By: CKN
It seems this is a special case of a factory being "decommissioned" and the molds stolen. Certainly, this is not an example of all Chinese tires.

Look at that semi next to you on the highway, they run "Double Coin" tires and others. Those companies watch maintenance costs so they must find some value in running Chinese tires.

There are some Chinese passenger car tires that do get decent reviews -especially when looking at the value equation.


International is shipping new school buses with Doublecoin tires. Also note: they come from the most advanced tire factory in the world.
 
Originally Posted By: Quattro Pete
Tread design of that Minos looks like a pirelli nero knockoff.


Probably is...might even have bought the molds to the old version from Pirelli.
 
Originally Posted By: dishdude
I found some Pegasus tires for my car, $48! I can't imagine how bad these tires are.




For that price...yeah, I might give them a try.
 
My DD (2010 Hyundai Tucson) had new Chinese made tires already on when I bought it. They actually rode fine and grip was okay on dry/wet road.
The brand was Fuzion and someone told me that Bridgestone spec'd the tire (or something like that).
Although they were new, they seem okay but had some whine at freeway speeds.
Because I saw they were made in China, plus the whine, I had them taken off and replaced with Michelin Defenders, after maybe 2-months driving on them. Okay or not, it just bothered me so I had to get rid of them.
Got the Michelin's @ DT and since the Fuzion tires looked near new, they knocked off from the price of the Michelin's (I wasn't expecting anything). I asked "your gonna sell China made tires to someone?" - he said as used, and there is always someone looking for cheap in price (not make).
 
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At least when you buy a brand name and their factory is located offshore from their home country, you can have some confidence level that they ride shotgun on production at that factory. But when you have a chinese based company you really have the wolf in charge of the hen house to begin with. They will do anything and everything to squeeze an extra $0.01 of profit out of a product. Case in point the poison pet food from years back where they treated the gluten in the food with an industrial solvent or some kind of shiat to fake the protein content and it killed and sickened lots of dogs and cats here. At the heart of chinese philosophy there appears to be a deficit of ethics, there is no concept of intellectual property rights or quality over quantity. It seems to be quantity and profit over all ethical concerns. You let a culture like this into the supply chain and you get what you deserve.
 
Originally Posted By: LoneRanger
At least when you buy a brand name and their factory is located offshore from their home country, you can have some confidence level that they ride shotgun on production at that factory.

But when you have a chinese based company you really have the wolf in charge of the hen house to begin with.


This really is my takeaway.

For example, take Cooper Tires. They have two factories in China, they fully own one factory and co-own the other.

I'm still no lover of Chinese tires, but I wouldn't have the same level of quality concerns buying a tire produced by Cooper in one of their Chinese factories, because they're clearly deeply involved in those facilities.

But a cheap tire from a very small U.S. company that just contracts with Yellow Sea Tire doesn't inspire a lot of confidence for me.

Side note - Cooper seems to be one of the major brands that sells lots of USA made tires still. I'm only using them as an example because I was just researching their Chinese facilities yesterday for another thread.
 
Originally Posted By: Jarlaxle


International is shipping new school buses with Doublecoin tires. Also note: they come from the most advanced tire factory in the world.

Supposedly Doublecoin and Goodyear worked together on that factory - also Toyo/Nitto make tires in China too in a joint venture with Cheng Shin, one of the biggest bike tire makers in the world and Michelin has a factory in China as well.
 
Originally Posted By: Jarlaxle
International is shipping new school buses with Doublecoin tires. Also note: they come from the most advanced tire factory in the world.


When sitting at a stop light a few months ago, I looked over and I thought I saw Doublecoin tires on the steer axle of one of the local district's buses.

But I racked it up to my eyes playing tricks on me, thinking that there was no way that the school district would put Chinese tires on a school bus.

They didn't put them on... they bought it with them.
 
Just some background on Chinese tires.

In the early 1980's, the tire company I worked for was contact by the Chinese government about building a tire factory in China. The deal was that the Chinese government would supply all the money involved, get the factory built per the specs, man the factory - and all the tire manufacturer had to do was supply the specs of what was supposed to be IN the factory and the specs for what was supposed to be BUILT by the factory, and supply manpower to TRAIN the folks who would be running the factory - and the tire manufacturer would get 50% of the output of that factory.

We declined because we could see that the factory could easily be nationalized (We had a factory in Iran and one in Venezuela that were nationalized.) - AND the net effect would be that the Chinese would avoid instantly have access to the latest technology and avoid decades of development. In retrospect, it was a good decision - although it looked like a HUGE short term money maker.
 
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