MaineCoast,

As you can see, almost everyone has a favorite Brand. My choice is Continental Extreme Contact.. But as you can tell by reading the Thread, everyone has their own favorite. That's what is so great about the World Today....Everyone in the business has to keep up with their competitors in quality and design. If you produce garbage, you will be forced out of Business......"Competition" makes them all good brands....Buy the one that looks the best to you, as they are all about the same!

Billy Clyde in Houston

 

MaineCoast,

As you can see, almost everyone has a favorite Brand. My choice is Continental Extreme Contact.. But as you can tell by reading the Thread, everyone has their own favorite. That's what is so great about the World Today....Everyone in the business has to keep up with their competitors in quality and design. If you produce garbage, you will be forced out of Business......"Competition" makes them all good brands....Buy the one that looks the best to you, as they are all about the same!

Billy Clyde in Houston

 

I've used 2 brands of tires on my '02 XKR, BFG Sport Comp 2 A/S and the Pirelli P-zero A/S. Both give good performance for the money, and are quiet enough so that tire noise is not a distraction.


PS: I know the OP is looking for a summer tire, but hey, life is too short to be parking a Jaguar for 6 months, I don't care how bad the roads and/or weather is , with a little care and some time spent rinsing off the undercarriage even the delicate XK's can be driven all year round. With zero ill effects.

Z

 

Respectfully, I disagree with the position that all tires brands are good brands. When you have open pricing, companies will compete on price. A great way to make your product cheaper is to make a lower quality product. There's a pretty wide range of reasonable tires, but I wouldn't under any circumstances buy the cheapest tire you can buy.

It's a similar thing with e.g. aftermarket parts for our cars. You can buy a chinese sensor that'll last 6 months or an OEM part that'll last 10. Price competition with little regulation creates variation in quality.

There was a time in the airline industry when airlines faced a price ceiling. They then had to compete on quality, and flying was a much more luxurious. Those price regulations have been removed, and now we have more austere economy class and even ultra-utilitarian airlines like Spirit.

The tire debate is a little like the oil debate. Some say to buy the highest quality if you can afford it. Some say to buy whatever's cheapest. I am somewhere in the middle: don't buy the cheapest, but do buy something reputable. Tires are the only part of your car that touch the ground, and can have a large effect on how enjoyable the car is and on how safe it is to drive.

 

OK! Mr. Sandwich.....Sounds like you should buy Continental Tires...This way you can be sure to have the Best Tire made and if I were you I would buy Mobil One next time you change your Oil.....You can be sure then that you have the best!

BC

 

General gmax. I drive pretty spirited and they seem solid. I like them way better than p zeros.

 

You nearly got me there, Billy. I was considering the Contis but decided against them. I started my oil changes with Mobil 1, but have since moved to Red Line. My car gets driven 2-3 hours per day, 5 days a week, so I need all the protection I can get on that front.

 

Mr. Sandwich.....Once again....Their all about the same

 

For name brands, yes. Having used Mobil 1, I don't think it's really all that different from any other thing you pick up at the store. I did a used oil analysis with it on the Jag, and the results were not great. I think we can all agree that as long as you use the proper weight oil and change it regularly, everything will be fine.

Smaller "boutique" brands like Red Line, Torco, Joe Gibbs etc. are actually compositionally different oils with different base stocks and very, very different additive packages. You cannot go to Autozone and pick those up. Probably won't make any difference on the next analysis, but we will see. It's always good to check the pudding to see if there's proof. Also, I'm a nerd who does math in his free time, so I like seeing actual data.

For the historical oil debates on this forum, shockingly few people have actually gotten their oil analyzed to see quantitative proof of any difference. Even then, as cars get worn in, they will respond differently to certain stimuli. What a new 4.0 likes, my high-mileage 4.0 may not.

My point up above with the tires was that, sure, you'll be fine going with Michelin, Pirelli, Hankook, Firestone etc etc. But maybe don't buy Ling Long tires, which are, yes, technically tires made of rubber that hold air, but are horrendously reviewed and are held to substantially lower quality standards than most other name brand manufacturers. To each his own, though.

In any case, looks like OP got what he needed.

 

OK! Mr. Sandwich,

You win! Never ever will I ever get into one of these Tires, Battery's or Oil "Whose the best" Threads again...You can't win even though you're not trying to! Seems there is always someone that always knows more than anyone else in the World....Good Luck to you with your Oil and Tires.

BC

 

Billy, not trying to win anything here. I am far from a mechanical or chemistry expert. I am just sharing what I've learned from experience research, and data. I agree with you that buying a more expensive oil is not going to save your engine, nor is your tire choice going to turn your car into a supercar. I am just saying that differences in manufacturing do exist. But, I can't say whatever is best. I don't think anyone can. Eventually it just comes down to personal preference.

I am not meaning to argue with you, Billy. Sorry if it came across that way. I am well aware of how much you have contributed to this forum, and I'm not trying to one-up you on anything.

 

This is going to be controversial. I was in your positon and surprised by the limited offerings in the stock size. I put on the 235/55/17 tires and really have had no issues. There is a greater variety of tires in this size. They are slightly taller and the speedometer error is I think 2%. So instead of doing 98 you are hitiing 100. There is also some tires in 255/50/17 but no personal experience.

 

Yeah, on the other end, I think @DavidYau maybe runs slightly undersized tires due to constraints in Bahrain, but let him correct me on that. Pretty sure he's fine, too.

A while ago, I bought a set of winter wheels and tires for my winter beater that were slightly larger in overall diameter than the stock ones. I thought that the difference might be mechanically unsound, but the engineer I bought them from explained to me that I was wrong since I was staying symmetrical along drive axles (i.e. square, since that car was AWD).

That dude was interesting. Had several mechanical engineering patents just from stuff he did in his free time.

 

I’m doubting the oil switch is buying you any extra engine life, maybe some peace of mind from believing your doing “everything” possible.

I’m a longtime Mobil 1’user, and using Mobil 1 0w-40 in the daily driver XKR, averaging 20,000 miles a year so far. Are you in that annual neighborhood, or a lot more ? What’s your current mileage ?

How about a friendly wager whose engine fails, or wears out sooner due to oiling issues ?

Z

 

Oh, I doubt we'd ever see the results of that bet (and if we did, I bet I'd lose). I expect our engines to fail due to something else long before lubrication is an issue, even if you or I were using the cheapest possible proper weight oil. (And even then, I'd expect my engine to fail before yours--I'm not half the wrench you are! And the car has been through...a lot).

I'm not switching for life, necessarily. I haven't seen the results of the UOA on the new oil. Maybe Red Line ends up being horrible for my engine. Who knows? I still use Mobil 1 on other cars, other oils on others. Never had a lubrication issue with any oil, nor have I ever seen any performance benefits switching from one to another. I think that's true of pretty much everyone.

My family has a couple audis with around 400,000 combined miles. The oils that have been used have been all over the place, but we've always been pretty religious about changing around the right intervals. I think that's what's most important.

I don't know if Red Line is *better*, only that it's compositionally different, and significantly so from most off-the-shelf oils. Whether that's good, bad, or meaningless I don't yet know. Perhaps all the hoopla about its additives and base stock are actually not good for a normal car, and the oil will have negative effects. I won't know until I see the numbers.

The current switch to Red Line is part of a bigger experiment. I plan on going through a bunch of different oils and seeing the data. The part of me that does actual research for a living knows that this is not really a valid experiment (time and age effects will be impossible to parse out), but it'll be fun to see. Maybe I should take votes on which oil should be next.

Actually, maybe we should make that friendly wager? I don't know what I'll be putting in my car by then, but I'll buy you a beer when it finally dies. Sound good?

 

just ribbing you re the Redline. most refiners make good quality synthetics. And as long as one doesn't pay attention to those silly oil online comparison tests where they oil soak a steel ball and put pressure on it until galls. So bogus. There is nothing happening in an engine that is remotely similar to these tests. But people love to rank anything, so oil is no exception I guess.

re the sad demise of our cars someday, we could just hold an old fashioned Irish wake and celebrate the good times the XKR's brought us. That way everyones a winner, with equal hangovers

Z.

 

Agreed on all points! When the car dies, I really ought to find a way to buy the whole forum a drink. If not for the forum, my car likely would have died on its tensioners long a go.

Hoping to do a big road trip in a year or so; maybe if I'm in anyone's neck of the woods, we can go for a drink under better circumstances.

 

Sir,
Are you running the 245/45R17 or the 255/40R17? I'm assuming you have the stock wheels.
Thanks,
Ron

 

Hi Ron,
I’m running 18 inch wheels. Tires are offset front to rear....Fronts: 245/48-18. Rears: 255/45-18
I ended up putting the Michelin Pilot Sports on. I also had them Road Force balanced, which
smoothed out the road feel a bit.

 

Hey Ron, glad you asked. I got a set of the 20" Montreal wheels from later XKRs, so I am running 255/35r20 in the front, 285/30r20 in the back.

Some of the road noise might be chalked up to the fact that the wider wheels are less aerodynamic, but having just returned from a 6 hour shuttling back and forth from Boston to New Haven this morning, I'm happy with both the noise and the ride quality (even compared to the original 245/45r17s I still run during colder months).

I now have around 3000 miles on the firestones, so too early to say about longevity. Although longevity was not really a priority for me.