GY Assurance Fuel Max Fail

...have GY Assurance Comfortread 45K+ miles never rotated, look fine, maybe I will rotate soon.

 

My 2010 came with the Goodyear OEM tires. They feathered so bad, I had to change them at about 20k. I did rotate them regularly. Didn't help. When I put on the Michelins, the alignment checked out fine. About 5k so far and all is well. On the Goodyears, it sounded like a truck with mudders.

On my truck, I had Goodyear tires also. Noise wasn't the problem. It had a bad pull to the right. Two alignments couldn't make it go away. I gave up and cursed GM. When I replaced the Goodyears with Michelins, the hard right pull magically went away. Now it tracks perfectly.

I'm not sure what's going on with Goodyear lately. But they're definitely on my do not buy list.

 

i personally went w/ michelin primacy MXV4. go to tirerack.com, put in your vehicle, and click on tire reviews for this vehicle. you would be suprised how many people wrote on their experiences with different tires.

 

Just to chime in - I have close to 15k miles on my assurance fuel max tires and they are looking great - they have been rotated every 5 or 6k and still have good tread on them. Overall I have been very happy with them.

 

Did you notice an increase in MPG's with the Fuel Max tires over
the stock factory tires?

With our Prius I seen a 2-3 mpg increase with Michelin Energy Saver
tires over factory Avid Yoko tires.

alfon

 

Well here's my 2C worth! I had GY Assurance tires OE. At 15K I was singing their praises too! But just today after several days wait for a local tire dealer to get them in, I have had Continental ProContact EcoPlus tires installed. Over the last 10K I have become very disillusioned with GY, at least this tire. They became noisy,....had the wah-wah noise going down the road, and they road like a rock. I tried to keep 40-42 psi in them, as I read on PriusChat that these higher psi's rendered higher mpg. I get my 50+ mpg, sometimes more, sometimes less. Have had one exceptional "best" of 65.1 mpg. for 170 miles. But that came at the cost of speed,....set cruise on 60mph, and never wavered, not something I can do everyday, (this is out on the open road, 4 lane).
Anyway, back on topic, on a recent rotation, (I do them myself), I found a "cut" in the tread on one of the tires. I took the car to a GY tire shop and asked them to look at it and tell me if it was a serious problem. Answer was no, it was just our "lousy streets/roads"! Then while talking to mgr of store he looked at the other front tire and said there's another there! Now, in research for new tires I've read that these cuts may be caused by "overinflation". You know that thing that is so common here on the forum. Yeah there really is a drawback to that, at least in some cases..... I had 4/32" left after only 37K. I decided that they had to go, and I sure wasn't going to replace them with more of the same! To put it bluntly, I'm not impressed with these GY tires.
I would have liked to have the Michelin Energy Savers, but due to Michelin's continual renewal of their $70. rebate, they are in a constant backorder status. So these Continental's have good stats and at least most reviews are glowing, so I will try them. I'll post more after a few K on them. The local tire shop checked the alignment, after installing these Continental's and the "toe-in" was off considerably on one side and slightly on the other, so that was addressed. Some of the reviews complained of "wandering" by the car with these tires, but where were these people when they bought this car?........electric power steering----little "feel" of the road. This is not a car you want to go down the road watching something other than the road, if you want to keep it on it, I don't care what tires you have on it.
One thing there may be no way to compare mpg on this tire compared to the GY's as I don't intend to run the high pressures in these. Right now, because installers are only going to put psi in the tires that is called for by Toyota, it rides soooo smooth. And the tires are very quiet. Both those will be compromised with overinflation, + the risk of cuts in the tread. So whatever the "hit" is in mpg, I think I will live with it. I do intend to run something like 38/36 in them. I think I won't loose much of the qualities that I have today, if I hold the pressures at that. And hopefully these tires will last, close at least, to the 70K they are rated at!

 

I appreciate your posts, greenclipper but I have to say that I have been overinflating my tires since I bought the car and i've used 5 different models and brands of tires and I have never experienced cuts in my tires. I wonder if this an issue with Goodyear tires? My Integritys were fine, however.

Keep us posted on your Continental tire experience. On paper I really like them.

 

I'm getting the impression the earlier production batches suffered some quality control issues. We'll see as mine rack up the miles.
.

 

Me too. Keep us posted, John.

 

Thanks for the input guys. To each his own, I'm fine with over-inflating tires, but I'd sure hate to have these cuts come in the "early" miles of these Continentals.
As an update, even though it's early days yet, I checked the psi of the tires the next morning after having them mounted, and no wonder the ride was so soft and smooth, they were half flat! 26psi that's all they had in them, no wonder my TPMS light was on! The tire shop told me it would go out "in a short time". I never read that in the owners manual, but didn't say anything. Despite what I said, I put 40/38 in them, and when finished the TPMS light had gone out! The ride is still pretty good, and they are still quiet, so I may leave them there, rather than the 38/36 I had thought I would go to.
A couple of things which are different to me, than to at least some of the other members: I have no "commute", am retired. And my wife uses the car at least around home as much or more than me. I don't know about anyone elses wife, but mine just points it down the road, and "ruts/rough roads be dammed"! And of course when you are often traveling over unfamiliar roads, you don't get to know the places in those roads to avoid, and sometimes at least it's: "too late". I've only had the car 21 months and am already to nearly 38K, so we have been on the move. We live 20+ miles from a lot of the places we have traditionally gone to, and find it hard to "break" from them. I especially love my Prius, my wife still wishes she had her Camry, but can get at times, better FE than me! Neither one of us are going to deprive ourselves of such things as A/C, or be an obstruction on the roads to obtain optimal mpg, so we are happy with the fact that it is as easy as it is to get what the mileage rating is on the fuel economy.
Thanks for indulging an 'ol boy who is just trying to keep up with the technology of today,.....in so many ways! lane:

 

You don't have too try and employ all the mpg tricks too be happy with the Prius. Like the wife does, just point it down the road and drive. No matter what you do you are still getting better mpg than just about any other car on our roads.