driving in the rain

[v.jones]

If your driving in the rain includes an occasional puddle (or there is enough water on the road to get the brakes wet), you could can be in for a scary surprise as your speed drops and the car shifts from regenerative to physical braking. Look ma, no brakes! until you get roll far enough to dry them out. The old school trick of touching the brakes any time you think they might be wet doesn't work in the Prius unless you shift to neutral first to disable regen braking.

Been there, done that, been scared #$%@#*! Learned the shift to neutral trick here on Priuschat.

Vince

[v.jones]

If your driving in the rain includes an occasional puddle (or there is enough water on the road to get the brakes wet), you could can be in for a scary surprise as your speed drops and the car shifts from regenerative to physical braking. Look ma, no brakes! until you get roll far enough to dry them out. The old school trick of touching the brakes any time you think they might be wet doesn't work in the Prius unless you shift to neutral first to disable regen braking.

Been there, done that, been scared #$%@#*! Learned the shift to neutral trick here on Priuschat.

Vince

[Tideland Prius]

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(DaveLeePrius @ Sep 10 2007, 09:15 PM) [snapback]510443[/snapback]</div>

It seems such the sport here on the PC board to trash the OEM Goodyear Integrities. My my my some of us are such, how to say, tire snobs!

I've driven our 2007 nearly 8,000 miles and the Goodyear tires have no issues. I am used to driving with Michelin tires and I can't see much if any difference between the two sets of tires.

Perhaps some of us are, ahem, better drivers than others?
[/b]

err.. no. Maybe the roads in Seattle are better but up here (hey, we get hit by the same low pressure system too), we get dumped on and while I have no issues when I'm actually moving, slippage does occur when accelerating (usually on the slippery stuff that bus stops are made out of.. you know the grey concrete rather than the black asphalt).

Oh and yeah I'm kinda afraid of going into this winter with my stock set... tempted to replace but hate to waste stuff esp. if it's still useable (what's the point of driving a Prius if I'm wasting resources in other areas).

[Tideland Prius]

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(DaveLeePrius @ Sep 10 2007, 09:15 PM) [snapback]510443[/snapback]</div>

It seems such the sport here on the PC board to trash the OEM Goodyear Integrities. My my my some of us are such, how to say, tire snobs!

I've driven our 2007 nearly 8,000 miles and the Goodyear tires have no issues. I am used to driving with Michelin tires and I can't see much if any difference between the two sets of tires.

Perhaps some of us are, ahem, better drivers than others?
[/b]

err.. no. Maybe the roads in Seattle are better but up here (hey, we get hit by the same low pressure system too), we get dumped on and while I have no issues when I'm actually moving, slippage does occur when accelerating (usually on the slippery stuff that bus stops are made out of.. you know the grey concrete rather than the black asphalt).

Oh and yeah I'm kinda afraid of going into this winter with my stock set... tempted to replace but hate to waste stuff esp. if it's still useable (what's the point of driving a Prius if I'm wasting resources in other areas).

[hobbit]

I drove on the Integrities for quite a while, and for the most part
they did okay but they didn't have a whole lot of tread depth left
and weren't very good in snow. And per the main topic here, felt
a little squirrely in the occasional puddle. I handed off the whole
set to a local fella who could probably get a few more miles out of
them when I got the Hydroedges.
.
The main thing about the goodyears was that they felt ... springy.
Rather fast and resonant bounce time-constant, and I think that's
one of the factors in what other people call "poor performance".
The Hydroedges immediately felt more solid, more damped. They're
only a little bit heavier but once they were on the car, they felt
a *lot* heavier and the whole overall note of tire sounds and going
over bumps was much deeper. Now this is probably a good thing,
because it means the HEs were handling terrain better and not trying
to go boing, boing, boing over it. I noticed a greatly reduced
tendency for the system to fall out of regen while braking semi-
heavily over bumps when the ECU sees a high current blip and hands
off all control back to the braking controller. So just being able
to hold a regen level more confidently over our lovely new england
winter-trashed roads was a nice perk.
.
_H*

[1fixitman]

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Bobwho @ Sep 1 2007, 09:41 PM) [snapback]505607[/snapback]</div>

I do not know about anyone else but both my daughter and I own Prius and when we went to get new tires the traction and wet handling improved markedly.

Moral: OEM rubber is the cheapest thing they can get. If you do not like the wet handling of your car get rid of the OEM rubber and buy decent tires to replace them.
[/b]

I work for a tire manufacturing facility......The OEM tires are a lot more expensive than some aftermarket tires. They are required to grind the pin vents to less than 1/32 of an inch. the tires have to be marked with several things like where the high point of the tire is so it is matched with the low point of the wheel when it is installed on the wheel. It has to be marked for conicity so it can be matched as a pair of positive conicity and negative conicity. these are only a few things that are done to OEM tires. Look at the aftermarket tires....at the little needle looking pieces of rubber that stick out all over it( pin vents). This is a grinding step that is skipped when we make ticket for the day and start sending tires to the aftermarket side of the warehouse. I hope this helps clarify that OEM tires are not cheap. Get a price on a goodyear integrity at your local toyota dealer then go to the tire facility that you purchase tires from and get a price on the same tire.