mtlaudia8

hello-
looking for tires 255 40 19 for audi 8
in miami area for my dad
can anyone recommend a place?
(not looking for premium brand tires- )
i am retired with budget
thanks
Mark

mishar

Try here.

transporter2004

second that

transporter2004

I would not recommend the Hankook Evo V12- I went through a couple of sets because of bubbles in the sidewalls. The Tire Rack replaced all of them free of charge, but it was a PIA

It was a shame, they were a nice tire for the money

Baloo588

Tirerack is the best place to order and deliver the tires to the dealer for installation. Its best doing the hunter road force balancers that are at the Audi dealers for best ride with no vibration unlike cheaper balancers seen at sears, belle tire, etc. Get Michelin pilot sport a/s for good ride and handling , or if your dad is looking for some smooth ride with longevity then go for the bridgestone turanza serenity plus or continental contiprocontact). This is from my experience on my Audi A8L 2006 model year.

mishar

I couldn't find any scientific explanation why that kind of balancing is better than conventional one. Only real data is that it uses less weight. That's not necessarily better. The rest is all marketing and believers opinions. Is anybody aware of some serious paper about this?

Baloo588

Really??? From your experience or? I mean I had more than few times with issues on dynamic balancing that could not find several tires that were slightly out of spec and had to be remounted to my rims on my BMW, Audi, Mercedes, and Lexus and got a smooth ride again irrespectively of how they tried to dynamically balance the tire. Oh and also the hunter road force machine found 3 defective tires on our new 2013 ML350 with vibration and our 2011 BMW 5 series with 2 defective out of round rims that could NOT be found on regular dynamic balancers. SO I will stick with my word that the hunter road force machine gets the assembly perfect and then dynamically balances it. It does not save that much weight. Please back up the facts before saying its not worth it. Its done by all top auto makers and even GM and Lincoln dealers use it to solve customer vibration problems with tires being greater than 15 lbs road force. Once they removed the tires and remounted it or replaced it the vibration went away. This COULD not be solved with regular dynamic balancers. The machine measures how round the assembly in pounds and allows the mechanic to mark the high spot of tire with low spot on rims ( no tire is perfectly round and no rim is perfectly round), It brings the assembly to a good position so that cars don't have a vibration and sensitive customers cannot feel it. There are alot of papers on this. Please read them up.

Alot of my friends and family with low profile rims and optional rims >19-20 inch had vibration issues and had to use hunter road force machine to solve this. They could not get it done with regular balancers. My Audi A8L vibrated with new set of tires which had to be hunter road force and replaced 1 tire and it was smooth as new. So yes its proven,. I will not use dynamic balancers alone anymore.

mishar

Yes. From my experience. I experienced inability to find scientific paper on this. If there are many, as you claim, please point me to one of them. I will gladly study it.

Regarding inferiority of a conventional balancing I must say I don’t agree. If you have tire that is properly balanced and steel gives vibrations it is well known for ages that it is good for garbage. You don’t need machine to tell you that.

Regarding amount of weight, I found that at many sites. That’s one of advertised benefits for a tire shop.

Matching high spot of a tire with low spot of a rim is in a domain of a third world countries. Unfortunately I doubt they have those machines.

Baloo588

If its vibration despite it being balanced, it does not mean the tire is bad. Your rim could be bad and the balancer could be out of calibration. Hunter road force machine have better calibration then most dynamic balancers. I have read alot online of people having great experience with Hunter road force machines and from my own experience. I cannot get technical documents but alot of automakers require Hunter road force machines in their dealers. It save alot of people time and money vs other places where people keep going back to and rebalancing their tires and getting pushed to other places were these technicians would say that the balance was bad and rebalance it and still vibration. Without proof, they have no idea to show customers that the tire was slightly out of round and the rim was bad. The hunter road force machine checks everything first and help make the assembly round by finding the highest point or the stiffer spot of the tire and mount it to the rim so that the total lbs is low. Its not done in third world country. They cannot tell which is what by looking at the tire. I understand that in your case you have never had to use it so its hard for you to really say its works or doesn't work. It does not need to be studied. People do research base on their experience and what the industry says. Hunter would not of made this machine if it didn't do anything extra over their conventional balancers. This cost more money and labor to do. I pay more to get what I want. I have had good dynamic balances before on thicker tires and smaller rims but with low profile rims and tire, there is less tolerance and some even higher quality tires (Michelins or Bridgestones) have to be put in the rear or the steering wheel will vibrate if > 10-12 lbs road force. I can feel the slightest vibration at certain speed from front or rear on any car and the tire is the culprit but others cannot feel it. So i get it road force checked and some perfect tire will be slighlty high >15 lbs and I get them rematched to rim to get below <10 lbs and the ride is glass smooth.
You can ask one of the hunter experts to send you a research paper. They have done several in early 2000s.

mishar

I disagree with this part. People's experience is not reliable source of knowledge and industry has all kinds of interests. Truth is rarely one of them. So I prefer Physics.