Tires

Dusty

Please educate me as to the meaning of "snipes" as pertaining to a tire.

Thanks in advance.

The best luck I ever had with tires were Bridgestones. I got 95,000 miles out of a set. At the time, I was logging about 34,000 miles a year of concrete sailing. Those came on a Toyota with a four cylinder engine that I put 195,000 miles on.

One of my customers wanted to buy the car if I ever sold it. When that day came, I told him I didn't want anybody mad at me over an old used car, so, the understanding was, if it broke in two going down the driveway, he owned both halves. He put 35,000 more miles on it and then got "T-Boned" in an intersection. End of story for Tojo.

She always gets the lifetime balance and rotation deal so they were rotated and balanced at from 4500 to 5000 miles and they were still trash tires.

I replaced them with the cheapest Cooper tire they had and so far they've run 40,000 and still look good.

On my truck I ran a set of the Firestone Wilderness for over 70,000 and then put them on a trailer. The only trouble I had was that I hit a piece of steel in the road and cut one in two.

I'm trying out a set of Kuhmo on my sons pick up. They have about 25,000 and still look good. If he can't tear them up or spin them slick pretty quick I'll put them on mine next time, they're alot cheaper and are a all position traction lug tire.

I don't like mud grips but I do like the square lug type all position tires.

The chain stores here (Wal-Mart, Costco and others) had various tires on sale for around $55 each for my Sienna. They also had tires for $100 each.

That seems to a quite a spread and I was not sure which way to lean.

The chains had 2 or 3 tires to choose from. A local independent shop that has served our community for almost 100 years had hundreds of options to choose from and suggested a different tire based on his experience indicating that it was a "good fit" for my car.

He wanted $12 per tire more than the cheapest for this "good fit" for a model of General brand not carried by the chain stores.

General had both the cheapest at $55 and the "good fit" at $67.

Both the $55 and $67 tires happened to be General Tires. I checked out the Continential/General website and found that they did not recommend the $55 for my car but they recommended the $67 as being the best fit for my car and my driving needs.

I'll be buying the "good fit" tires before the end of summer as I am more confident I will be satisified with the $67 over the cheapest.

So, do some surfing. I found a lot of information on the internet....maybe too much, but, I think I am making a more informed decision after doing some research.