Hi All

For those of you still on the OEM Tires, I thought I'd give some insight regarding changing brands.

It's funny, I was given my Grandmother's 1987 Civic in 1991, when it only had about 15,000 miles on it. It was riding on the factory Dunlops and I remember thinking how awful road noise was. I particularly remember riding on concrete highways that had been patched with blacktop...any time you rode over the patches, the sound was deafening! When they wore out, I switched to Bridgestones and have tried ever since to use Bridgestone tires, as I became a big fan.

Fast forward to 2006...I got my Fit and actually didn't mind the Dunlop tires. I thought the road noise in the Fit was probably normal for a $15k car. My Grandfather would continually tell me how much road noise he could hear when I would talk to him from the car. In fact, he'd easily guess how close I was to home based on the fact that he knew I was on concrete roads!

I wore out my first set in about 28,000 miles...I am notoriously not so good with tires...I drive pretty hard. They probably had about 5000 miles left on them, but I am not one to screw around with the only 4 things on my car that touch the road.

I ended up thinking that the OEM Dunlops weren't so bad, so I got a new set from the Tire Rack. This was about a year ago. Recently, I realized they were getting a bit low, but being that I have my 4WD Element for bad weather driving, I wanted to hold out until spring and put a few thousand more on them. Last Monday, I noticed a bad bubble in the sidewall of my right front tire. Rather than take any chances, I checked to see about replacements (I have 56,000 miles on the car now).

I checked with Tire Rack and found out that the OEM Dunlops are in really short supply and they are supposedly only sourcing them to Honda dealers. I checked with my dealer and they couldn't even get them. Finally in desperation, I checked with the local Goodyear place to see what they had available. I settled on Hankook Optimo 420's, as they were reasonably priced. Not really, for a 15", but I digress...

Anyway, what a difference!!!! I drive down the road and can barely notice any road noise. A quick guess is that my car is 15 decibles quieter at 80 mph. It's unreal. They handle really well and did just fine in the rain. I have no idea about snow, but due to the Element, it's rare that my Fit ever sees real snow.

Suffice to say I'll never put another g*ddamn bald tennis ball tire on my car ever again. I never liked Dunlop before and can't believe I ever made the choice to replace tires with Dunlops.

Has anyone else had the same experience?

 

It is one thing to say stay away from a specific tire then to say stay away from Dunlop as a whole. OEM tires are KNOWN to suck be it the Michelins pilots or whatever. Dunlops makes the DZ101 and the Z1 both of which are FANTASTIC tires for what they are made for and price. Just because one tire sucks doesnt mean the whole dunlop brand sucks.

 

I guess I should have been more specific. I only buy all-season tires. The DZ101 and Z1 are high and extreme performance tires. They are designated Summer Only and any SO tire that I have ever used (I had an S2000) turned rock solid and were treacherous in cold weather. Not to mention that kind of tire typically wears very quickly. Both of them are priced extremely well, however being summer only, I wouldn't buy them.

It's sort of like Motorcycle tires. I tried Dunlop when I was riding my CBR600 really hard and on smooth roads in good conditions they were great. However, all around, they wore fast and didn't handle long distance or wet weather well. It seemed they'd make an awesome track tire, but for day to day use, I prefer something else.

I am sure a lot of it is personal preference, but for the my Fit, I like a tire that holds up well with my somewhat extreme driving (both mileage and the way I drive) but I certainly don't need a track-day tire for the whopping 109 horsepower beast. I would think that 85 to 90 percent of Fit drivers don't need, or want to spend the money on extreme performance tires.

 

Like you said, it all boils down to preference, but was your only reason for disliking them the road noise? It seems a bit nit-picky if so considering the Fit w/ the Dunlops is not really that noisy. Wear isn't even really that bad either -- 28k miles is for most people is probably over 2 yrs worth of driving based on the national average. If you're doing that much in a shorter time frame that's somewhat atypical and you can't really slam the tire for that. Sure, there are much better tires out there, but for OEM the Dunlops by far aren't the worst (most people seem to think the Bridgestone's that came stock on the WRX take that honor -- what were they, 092's I think).

 

I certainly wasn't trying to slam how long they lasted. I would guess that my average for a set of tires is only about 23k miles, but I don't let them get down to the point where they are damn near bald. I see some cars in parking lots with tires that must have 60,000 miles on them.

Yeah, slamming them for road noise, which is what I did, may seem nit picky to some, but I drive on average about 45k miles a year, and during a lot of those miles I have to be on the phone, so the difference in road noise makes quite a bit of difference. I really didn't realize how bad it was until it was gone...it is quite amazing. I think anyone that replaces the OEM Dunlops with something else that has a lot less noise would know exactly what I am talking about. You may never realize the road noise is there...once it's gone you can't believe how bad it was. Of course, I do a lot of 80 to 85 mph driving, and of course there is more road noise there than at 35 mph.

If I had done a review of the first 50,000 with my Fit, perhaps the only complaint I would have had was the fact that the car had a little too much road noise, but I understood that I bought a $15k car, and that there was really no room to complain about that. However, I found out that it was due to crap rubber and now said crap rubber is gone and with the rubber went my only complaint.

 

Hp has nothing to do with it, but thats a different debate. And your right the majority or people wont take advantage of the lightweight super rigged chassis the fit has, and use it to get to point a and b which is fine.

 

haha you want to talk about road noise? try out some bf goodrich g force kdw's. above 40mph it sounds like im driving over teeny little bumps. but they grip like nobodys business and that is the most important aspect of a tire to me.

 

Random, *sort of* off topic question - but how many miles can we expect to get out of the stock tires?

I *just* passed 40,000 miles and I'm going to need some new tires by the summer I suspect.

 

Man, you guy's get mad mileage out of your tire's Every car I've owned I only got 20,000 mile's out of them.I will say,I've had Lexus/BMW/and currently my traveling car CLK and the tire's on those even suck from the factory.I'm not the biggest fan of Bridgestone(I had a set on my old Prelude)but I,ve had pretty good experience's with Toyo's.For the money I think the stock Dunlop's aren't too bad(the lightness of our car's help).Now I need to just to get more than 20K out of my tire's.

 

Haven't had Dunlops in almost 20 years. Damn I'm old. Used to be a BMW guy back in the late 80's and had Dunlops. Havent had a set since. They seemed ok back then, noise and performance wise. But then again that was almost 5 presidents ago.

When the tires on my Fit go, I will probably get new wheels and get a new set of tires as well. I'll keep your Dunlop experience in mind when I start shopping for tires.

 

Dunlop, like nearly all tire makers, makes some poor tires and some excellent ones. They had an SPsomething or other that was nearly the worse tire we ever tested. It was cheap so it came on a lot of new cars.

Best advice before buying any tire: check the tests and owner replies on the make, model, and size if you can on TireRack.You can also check dimesions and fitment.

 

My fit came with bridgestone...you all got dunlop?

 

How old is your Fit? Maybe there REALLY is a shortage! _

 

Hey, does enyone have this tires Michelin Pilot Exalto A/S if Yes please let me known how they perform in everyday driving. I plan to buy them 195/60HR14. I have my dunlot tires and I past 10K yesterday, my tires at front dos not have anythink to create traction with the ground. They look like a F1 tires at the back there is some left but not much. I did a alaigment and everythink with the traction and alligement was fine so i assume that this tires are not good at all.

 

dang you guys getting ~20k miles on a set of tires must drive your cars REALLY hard! i know a couple who drives their cars nice and easy and usually end up replacing the tires due to age (old, brittle rubber) as opposed to wear. One set of their michelin's are going on 3+ years right now i believe.

 

I just replaced the Dunlops that came with my 2007 Fit Sport with the Michelins and I noticed a big difference in handling in snow,rain and dry weather. Also not as much road noise. I had 29,000 miles on the Dunlops and I would guess I could have driven another 10,000 miles on them. I read the reviews on Tire Rack and there is a somewhat small choice of tires in the 195/55/R15 catagory. I bought the Michelins because of that review and I would highly recommend them to anyone who needs all season tires. You will notice a big difference from the stock Dunlops.

 

Alas, most OEM tires on less-expensive cars tend to be pretty bad in terms of ride quality and handling. That's why on my current Honda Civic HX CVT coupe I replaced the original Firestone FR680 tires with Bridgestone RE92 tires at 30,000 miles and it's lasted nicely even up to now at 92,000 miles on the odometer. I'm going to replace them with Yokohama AVID TRZ tires, which have gotten excellent user reviews on the Tire Rack web site (I believe they have the 195/55R15 size for this tire, so that will make them excellent replacement tires for 2007 and 2008 Honda Fits ).

 

Well, My Fit has about 31K on the original tires, and it is getting pretty close to new-tire time. Does anyone here have a quiet tire? I HATE the amount of road noise I get from my OEM Dunlops. I don't know if it's the tires, or the lack of sound attenuation in this car, but it is unreasonably loud in my opinion. Especially with the back seats all the way down. I want a little bit of serenity in there unless the stereo is turned up!

I am not familiar with Hankook Optimo tires. That's something they carry at Goodyear?

 

The Goodyear place I went to only carried Goodyear and Cooper. I am not a Goodyear fan (call me a tire racist, but I am very biased toward certain brands....maybe it's really just AGAINST certain brands) so I asked if I had any other choices.

He deals with a tire wholesaler that has many options and was able to get them by 1 pm that day. I was dealing with a good size bubble in a tire and didn't want to mess around. I normally buy all of my tires from Tire Rack, but this bubble happened (or was noticed) on a Friday and I didn't want to wait until Monday or Tuesday.

I very highly recommend Tire Rack...they have local installers listed on their site...you can drop ship right to them. Their prices are typically excellent...even my one mechanic uses them because he can source tires cheaper from them than what his wholesalers offer.

The Hankooks were listed on Tire Rack. I checked what other all-season tires were available and wasn't thrilled with any of them.

With the mileage I drive, I figured 2 things:

1. If I hate the tires, they'll be gone soon enough anyway.
2. I hate to spend $95+ per tire for 15" wheels, especially considering how fast I wear them out. I remember when my del Sol VTEC 14" tires were $52 (I am talking like 2 years ago) and I can't stand that 15's are so expensive.

It's funny, I tend to be a Bridgestone guy, but right now I have the triumverate of newer Asian tire companies. My del Sol is currently riding on Sumitomo's (Japan), thanks to a shortage on decent (and affordable) tires for my del Sol (I put maybe 1000 miles a year on it now) and my wife's Mazda 5 now has Kumho tires (South Korea). Add in the Hankooks (South Korea, too) on the Fit and there you have it.

I mentioned those names to my 91 year old Grandfather and he asks who in the world these companies are.

I don't really know myself, but I'll tell you one thing. The worthless Dunlop 116 db screamers are gone and I can't believe how quiet the Hankooks are!

 

FWIW, I see the Sumitomo HTR+ are available at $58.

These are the tires I put on my del Sol....I have the 160 HP VTEC model. Normally I put great tires on that car, but it has become a semi-garage-queen, so I figured whatever goes on it at this point will see 1000 miles a year and will dry rot before they are close to worn.

Though I was being cheap at the time, I am amazed by how good they are.

If I had had the time and didn't have the bubble issue, I most certainly would have gone for them for the Fit at that price.

I normally try to stay away from High Performance All-Season...I try to stick with plain All-Season tires due to the fact that the High typically wear faster, but from what I am hearing from some people, that isn't always the case. That, coupled with how I drive...my regular All-Seasons don't last that long anyway...