Hello,

I'm looking to buy summer tires. I have a dedicated set of winter so I have no interest at all in performance in snow or icy conditions. I'm not looking to spend a lot of money; I used to run Yoko S Drives/Advan Fleva on my GD3 and these were great but did wear pretty quick. They are also expensive.

I find the ride/steering of the GK a bit mushy compared to GD (currently running winters), so something a bit stiffer would be nice.

In the cheapo range, I've got Rotalla (74$!), Headway, Antares, Landsail, GTRadial, Aosen and Sailun. I am not considering Sailun because I've driven on those before and thought they were utter trash.

In the middle range (~30$ more per tire) I have Kumho TA51 (105$), Falken Sincera (115$), GT radial maximller pro (121$), Goodyear Assurance (121$), Tiger Paw Touring A/S DT (128$).

Right now I'm juggling between Landsail LS388 (350$ for all 4) or Falken Sincera SN250 (465$ all four).

What do you guys recommend? Falken Sincera appears to be highly regarded on TireRack. Perhaps worth the exra $$$?

 

Oddly enough, out of your "cheapo" list the only brand I've ever heard of is Sailun.

I had the Falken Sincera on my 2010 Fit for several years. Just FYI, the Sincera is an all-season tire, but maybe when you say "summer" you mean not-winter vs an actual summer tire.

Anyway, the Sinceras are fine tires for a Fit. I cut the sidewall on one and decided to replace the full set with the all-season Falken Ziex ZE950 which seems like a slightly better tire (to me) and can be found for <$100/tire.

 

Can you please educate me on what makes a summer tire? I was told that now there exists "all seasons" and "all seasons with winter rating". The winter rating is pertinent in my province since it is a legal requirement after dec 1 that all tires have a snowy mountain logo on it. Running a snow rated all season in my neck of the woods is pretty much suicidal so I would never consider it.

Even on TireRack, all i see is different versions of "Touring" and 1 "performance" category. I think the only tire I saw in "performance" was a winter.

 

There are basically infinite numbers of articles and Youtube videos on the Internet (search the archives of any car magazine) talking about different tire categories, so I won't try to rehash all of that here.

In reality, all you need to know is that you have real winter tires (with the 3PMSF symbol on the sidewall) for places like Canada and you have non-winter tires. You can run winter tires all year long, and many people do in the Northeastern US where I live, but the cost will be much faster tread wear outside of winter conditions (and inevitably you'll go into a winter with worn-out winter tires that have lower performance than you need for safety).

Then you have All-Season, or more recently All-Weather tires. Those are the compromise tires that work okay for most vehicles, for most drivers, for most conditions.

At the other end of the spectrum from winter tires you get summer performance tires, designed to maximize (dry) traction at the expense of wet traction, tread life, (often) noise, etc. These are overkill for most vehicles, being driven by most drivers, in most conditions. If you liked to take your Fit to auto-cross events you might get a set of maximum performance summer tires, mount them on a lightweight set of wheels, and switch to them for the event. You probably wouldn't want to run them all the time because they're (generally) expensive, will wear out quickly if daily driven, and have abysmal traction in wet or cold conditions.

I will note that the manufacturers confuse everything by constantly coming up with new classes and categories. Also note that outside of the 3PMSF classification for real winter tires I'm not sure if there are any real benchmarks for how a manufacturer categorizes their tires. In the end, it's all about marketing. I think we all know someone who thinks their car is hot stuff and therefore won't run a "Touring" tire when they see that there's a "High Performance" or (gasp!) "Ultra High Performance" tire available.

If I put my car (2010 Fit Sport) in Tirerack.com I get the following categories of tires in the OEM 185/55R16 size.
Grand Touring All-Season
Standard Touring All-Season
Ultra High Performance All-Season
High Performance All-Season
Studless Ice & Snow

The first four categories are All-Season tires, with the third and fourth categories leaning a bit more towards maximizing traction at the (likely) expense of tread life and noise. The final category is obviously the winter tires you Canadians know and love.

The Falken Sincera is in the Grand Touring All-Season category according to Tirerack.
The Falken Ziex is in the Ultra High Performance All-Season category according to Tirerack.

Either would be perfectly reasonable to put on your Fit during the (3, 4, 5?) months when you're not required to run winter tires in Canada. Like I said, I had Sinceras and now I have the Ziex. In my case, when I needed to get a new set the Ziex was cheaper and available through Wal-Mart whereas the Sincera was out of stock. I do feel like the Ziex has slightly better traction, but my "Fast and Furious" days are way in the past so that's not a criteria I'm shopping on. If it matters, the tread pattern of the Ziex does look "sportier" and that will make you feel fast even if (like me) you never exceed the speed limit.

 

I'll probably be getting new summer tires (I have a separate set of winters) next year. My list is short:

General Tire Altimax RT45 on my lower price range.
maybe a Yokohama or Michelin in the higher range.
lots of Chinese brands in the market but I wouldn't touch any of them.

I'm leaning towards the Altimax as good enough.

 

I've been running Firehawk Indy 500. No real complaints.
I think 195/55R16 works on stock wheels, but will raise the car by 6mm.
If you have an aftermarket wheels, say 16x7, 205/50R16 should work perfectly.

 

We had Assurances on my wife's Kia Soul. They're okay. Better than the Nexens it came with. But I'd buy something else next time. I think the price you quoted is expensive for how well they drive/ride. They're good in the rain but (I thought) a little loud and thick? heavy? stiff-sidewalled? Just meh. For $120 you can do better than meh. Can't speak to longevity because we don't drive a ton of miles per year and then we halve that by driving on winter tires for almost half the year.

I've had Altimax winter tires on non-Fits and liked them a lot. Great value. When it came time for "summer" tires on one of our cars, I asked my tech about installing RT45s and he recommended not to. Great all season tire, he said (which concurs with what I've seen on the Web). But they're a little rough and can get noisy fast. If you don't need the winter traction, the tech said (we don't; winter tires), you can get a smoother, quieter ride with another tire. I ended up with Bridgestone Ecopias, which were smoother and quieter. No complaints there. But you might want to check them out if you want to stiffen things up some, if you won't mind the noise.

 

Factory fitted tires for the GKs made in Japan were in most cases Dunlop SP Sport or Yokohama. I had Dunlops, and the only complaint I have is that they wear faster than some other brands. Next summer tires for my GK5 will be Yokohama Bluearth.

 

I got a pretty banging deal on Kumho Solus tyres. About 250-300 usd tax in for all four before rebate. Funny enough, I spent ages looking for the direction of rotation. There isn’t one! The tyres just have an “outside” marking and can be placed on any side. I mounted them on my GD sport rims and they look pretty nice.

as far as quality, I find they are super shifty over bumps and cracks. It feels like the car is crabbing to the side. Wet traction so far has been excellent. The ride is a bit vague but I find that of the GK in general. I’m thinking 16” rims and a shorter sidewall would probably improve steering accuracy more than a different tyre. The ride is very quiet and smooth on the highway so all in all I rate these tyres a 7/10.

 

Some tires are directional, some are not. If I was buying tires I would give priority to non-directional so there would be no hassles with tire rotation. I'm not really sure though if there's any difference in performance between the two types.

 

the non directional tyres have asymmetrical tread since most of the grip is generated from the outer portion of the tyres.

I’m pretty sure a directional tread will have optimized grip accross the whole tyre surface, or else there would be no point in a directional tread if not for the “look” of it.