Same tire size not created equal.

[Wes Harden]

My daughter is up from Phoenix.
With in an hour I had her car on the lift. 1st time I've seen it since B4 the cat was stolen. Cat repair looks good. 1 O2 sensor was stolen, but they must have cut wires on sensor side.
So she had a flat tire had to be replaced, Discount Tire sold her a Corsa brand tire. The others are Cooper's, all are 215 70r16.
The Corsa is 1/4" taller than the Cooper. Is why car was pulling, not mention is awd Honda Element.
Going down to Discount Tire tomorrow. They claim they will credit me for wrong tire.
The Cooper's seem to be Pep Boys only. But I bet Discount has same tire under different name. Just can't get until Tuesday day after they go home.

 

[imiceman44]

My daughter is up from Phoenix.
With in an hour I had her car on the lift. 1st time I've seen it since B4 the cat was stolen. Cat repair looks good. 1 O2 sensor was stolen, but they must have cut wires on sensor side.
So she had a flat tire had to be replaced, Discount Tire sold her a Corsa brand tire. The others are Cooper's, all are 215 70r16.
The Corsa is 1/4" taller than the Cooper. Is why car was pulling, not mention is awd Honda Element.
Going down to Discount Tire tomorrow. They claim they will credit me for wrong tire.
The Cooper's seem to be Pep Boys only. But I bet Discount has same tire under different name. Just can't get until Tuesday day after they go home.

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View attachment 427818

That's why I always do pairs at minimum.

 

[Blue85]

I'm far from a Honda expert, but I think Element is FWD with rear assist on demand (like most CUV), so as long as traction is fine, the mismatched tires shouldn't be any worse than a FWD sedan. Snow could be interesting.

 

[frankin5]

You not suppose to change just one on an awd system. You have to change all,

 

[Wes Harden]

Yep 4 new tires today, all the same size. Guess what ? No more pull, go figure.
Problem was Daughter went to Discount Tire for replacement of damaged tire, and the Coopers on the car were from Pep Boys. If we weren't under the clock I would have had Discount order 2 of the Cooper HT's in their store name and compared them to Pep Boys HT's. Discount did give me some $$ for screwing the pouch on the replacement and bought 2 of the 3 Coopers. Plus another 5% against 4 new tires.

 

[sweetk30]

15+ years doing tires i can say this .

Even in same brand there can be a difference in model to model .

Also the way the casing is made it can be a more flat tire tread or a domex tread.

 

[88Silverado]

Back in the day all you had to do was make sure the new radial tires went on the front and the old bias ply's were on the rear so you didn't understeer into the wall
I do miss is the quietness of the old Nylon bias ply tires...

 

[Wes Harden]

I think yo have that backwards. Radials on the rear, they stop a whole lot better than bias ply. If you put radials on the front chances of ends swapping in a server braking event greatly increase.
Greatest improvement ever is radial tires, go from a white knuck death trap to 1 hand on the wheel left foot on right knee, right arm around sweet heart just by changing from bais ply to radials

 

[88Silverado]

I remember the radials had better traction and the front bias would push and understeer under hard breaking until the radials let go then full oversteer.
I also remember running radials on the front and bias on the rear and the cars were unstable under hard acceleration. Lot easier to spin it around in turns.
Agree radial tires were a great invention for vehicle safety, like going from 4-wheel drum brakes on a rainy day to disc.
I remember the old 8-ply Winston bias tires on my 66 GMC truck (351 V-6). They would get flat spots over night and it would take a few miles until the tires turned round again. Forget sipping coffee for the first 10 miles!
Ahh..1976, High School, working at Mark C. Bloome tires, making $3.28/hr, gas still around .50c/gal.... what happened?