Oh My Tires

Meist21 · May 15, 2004

I know this topic has been beaten to death. I have some Goodyear tires on my LS 400 ( when I bought it) and now it is time to replace them. I have seen a lot of posts about the Bridgestone Tuanzas. Actually my neighbor has had four installed on his 98 LS 400 and seems to like them but has been having balancing issues. Not sure what the deal is. Looking to replace the tires soon and was looking for input from everyone here. The Goodyear tire just does not look right but I swear by Goodyear tires. Anyone?

SCdriver · May 15, 2004

Try tirerack.com for advice and good prices. I have Bridgestone RE950's on a 95 LS400. Excellent in the dry and rain. I use more performance oriented tires for the SC. Go through the tirerack questionaire for the type of driving you do or give them a call. I have always gotten good advice from them and unlike some other reports in the forum, the people I have dealt with there over the last 20 years have always been professional and polite.

1UZ-FE · May 15, 2004

I bought my 94 LS with about 156k on the clock about 4 months ago. The car had Bridgestone Turanzas that tooked like they had NEVER been run on. They were BRAND new. Since the purchase i have put about 10,000 miles on my car and have not had a single problem. You said that your neighbor was having a problem balancing these tires? If he/she doesn't drive on the highway for too long or even at all then thats probably why they seem out of balance. Here is an example of what I mean. It is really hard to word properly what i am trying to explain but here it goes. Just bare with me. I took a road trip to California from North Carolina. It took 3 days to get there. I stopped and slept for 2 nights. When i got up the second day and third day and got in the car to start driving again, the tires seemed to be out of balance. After driving for a few minutes the vibration went away. This vibration was by no means overly disturbing would have had no problem if it never went away. Apparently, tires are made out of "special rubber" (dont know how to explain it) that can kind of go with the flow of gravity and some of the mass of the tire can "run" to the bottom when sitting for a long time (i.e. over night). I don't know if you know too much about tires but tires used to not be steel belted. Tires today have steel belts to prevent this "sagging" of the rubber. Steel belted tires may still have some "sagging" like I experienced. I dont know if all tires do this to the extent of the Turanza but what probably happened is that as i started moving at a high rate of speed again the tires "rebalanced themselves" as the rubber moved back to where it was supposed to be. Maybe your neighbor wasn't on the highway for long enough for the problem to fix itself like mine did. Anyway, I would highly reccomend the Turanza but then again maybe i got the only good set ;). Hope this helps in your search for a good tire.

Thats my 2 cents!

btw, the treadwear is excellent, they are rather grippy in dry & rain & even in snow, great ride, and road noise is minimal.