Interesting to look at the math a little deeper... You saved $220 on the tires but it looks like over the life of the tires you'll be spending another $300 on gas - this is assuming tire life of only 20K and gas steady at $3/gallon.

Even with the other posters suggesting drops of 2-3 mpg in the move to non-LRR tires it argues that the extra few hundred dollars are worth it in the long run...

 

I took a fresh peek at the Nav system's average mpg and it's now reporting 31.8mpg. So our results are about the same as others here who wandered from LRR tires. This is a company car so the co pays for tires and gas. Had I know the mpg would suffer so much I would have stayed with LLR tires, though maybe not the overpriced MXV4 S8's.

 

I had a similar thing happen with my HCH. I bought some heavy-duty high mileage tires (and they lasted a pretty darned long time). But I suppose that the tires were physically heavier than the ones that came with the car, since my fuel economy dropped as well.

 

The spin up weight of the tires would affect the city mileage. I find it best to compare tires at the tirerack.com/ site. You can compare tires, weights, tire rotation for a mile and etc.

I'm using the Energy tires that came with my four month old TCH. I hope to stay with them. I'm running them at 40 psi cold. It may be about 10,000 miles before I can tell any wear pattern. I thought 40 psi would be too much but they do ride good.

 

I wanted the LRR tires, but hated the low mileage I got from the Bridgestone tires that came on my car, so I looked at the michelins. The cost was rediculous around here, so I looked on tirerack. From what i remember, I got them for a bit over $100 a tire shipped to my door. I had my dealer put them on the car for $50, so I got four new tires for less than $500. The price for the bridgestones were about the same. I could have gone with a little cheaper tire, but it was not woth it to me to save a few dollars on the front end to spend more on the back side. I aspecially hated the idea of the bridgestones since they cost about the same as my discounted michelins, but only lasted 35,000 miles, where the michelins should last 60,000.

 

I'm in the market to replace the crappy Bridgestones that started to go bald at 15K. I have 23K on them now and they are cupped, noisy and effecting handling. The snows will be blowing here soon.

Today one tire dealer told me I needed "v-rated" tires and the cheapest ones were $113 each. Sams Club has 215-60R-16 for as low as $60. I am getting a little confused/concerned about what to replace them with.

BTW, the Toy dealer recommended/offered Mich MXV4 at $189 per tire or Yoko AVS for $172 per tire. Yikes!

 

I am puzzled as to why they recommend V rated tires. The TCH can not go over ~ 120 mph. V-Rated is up to 149 mph. Reality is T rated ( up to 118 mph) tires would be quite safe. Link to Speed Ratings

 

One reason might be that very few LRR tires seem to be T rated. On a quick survey of Tire Rack and several other on line stores, most of the ones in the now aged Green Seal list and those I know about were not available in T rated versions.

I so wonder, however, if a T rated tire would weigh less....

 

I got to say that I am totally blown away by the poor tire mileages I'm reading here.. I only have 8500 miles on my TCH but the wear on the tires is quite literally imperceptable.. They're Michilens and have been inflated to 40 PSI since I got the car a year ago.. Most of my driving is city (75-80%)..

 

I ended up finding UniRoyal Tiger Paws that give a warrantee for 70K. All of the Michelins I looked at would not provide a warrantee beyond 25K and most were priced in the $115-130 range.

I've ordered the TigerPaw from Sears and they will cost about $99 per tire and with the package get free lifetime rotation/balance/alignment check.

Just about everyone I've talked to, plus my research on the web, were consistent that v-rated tires, aka "high performance tires" tend to be made with "soft rubber" to improve traction and consequently wear out faster, particularly all-weather tires. Several articles on-line note that racing tires are made even "stickier" and only last a couple of hundred miles or less. They also generally don't recommend dropping to the next lower speed rating of H, but some of the articles on-line said it might work. Not sure I want to be the test case as winters can be brutal in south central Maine.

The Bridgestones on the car have a treadwear rating of 260 (also A traction and A temperature) which is pretty low. Can someone who has the factory-installed Michelins tell us what the ratings are for those? It seems the folks with the Michelins are not complaining in this group, only the people with the Bridgestones.

BTW, I got an e-mail from Toyota implying the problem was caused by me. They note that the service schedule tells us to rotate the tires at 6,000 miles. I rotated them at 7000 since the dealer told me to rotate them on every other oil change. He also told me that balancing and alignment checks were not necessary. Like 1,000 more per rotation was really going to make a tire wear out 40,000 before its time. That's right, blame the victim!

Regardless, for a car that costs $27,000, you should get tires that last longer than a year and 20,000 miles.