Using Michelin to Turn my Ride into a Magic Carpet Ride

Disclosure: Thanks to Collective Bias for sponsoring my tire buying experience!

Nearly 70,000 miles in and it was finally time to upgrade my OEM tires. Despite lasting as long as they did, they made jet-engine level noises every time I hit the rough roads of New York, and I remember spinning 180 degrees on more than one occasion after a snowstorm too. Of course, slamming on the brakes in the ice and going whee whee wheeeeeeee like the little piggy probably didn’t help the tire’s traction much either.

Now with a major road trip on the horizon, I needed something that would perform well across all kinds of terrain, and like the mighty mailman, neither rain, nor snow, nor sleet, nor hail would prevent the tires from delivering the traction and control I needed.

My googling eventually brought me to TireRack.com, which offered an extensive database of information on tires, including surveys, reviews, specs and an easy way to research all the tires that specifically fit your car.

After reading through quite a few reviews from owners of the same car, I narrowed my options down to tires from General, Kumho, Michelin and BFGoodrich. I knocked off General because their tires were said to wear very quickly (although they did have the best road test score), then BFGoodrich because they were the same brand as my OEM tires, and despite improving the tires over the years a few reviewers were still complaining about the road noise. That left Kumho, with very cheap tires but a good rating, and Michelin, with very expensive tires but an excellent rating.

Ruling out cost as a factor, it was easy to see who topped the list: Michelin, specifically their new LTX M/S2 tires which outranked every other tire in its class according to the survey. Plus they were offering a $70 rebate. Yay!

For a price comparison, I checked a few local dealers like Mavis and Sears to see what the difference in costs would be. Sears was pretty good. Mavis was insane: $136 to install?? Pass.

TireRack.com had a list of highly recommended dealers I could go to, but because my tire buying was being sponsored, I needed to give Walmart’s TLE (Tire and Lube Express) a chance. The prices were very good, at least $30 cheaper than the rates from TireRack’s recommended dealers, but still, it’s Walmart, so automatically I was apprehensive. My initial fear was that they’d install the tires inside out, or the tires might set the car on fire, or electrocute me if I touched them, or something.

And of course they didn’t have the LTX M/S2 tires in stock either, so I still had to order them from TireRack. Since I lived in an apartment, it was probably not a good idea to have a pile of tires sitting in front of my door all day, so I opted to have it delivered to a work address instead. Fortunately TireRack didn’t give me any problems with that, but I had to hope I could intercept the delivery in time before having to explain to my supervisor why there were 4 very large Michelin tires stacked on his desk. Heh.

UPS really came through here too. Despite being basic ground shipping, the tires literally arrived the next day. Nice. I quickly went to squirrel them away someplace safe, then came back early next morning to pick them up and make a mad, crazy drive out east to Walmart to have them installed. When I finally arrived, thankfully there was hardly anyone around. They gladly took the tires, and before I knew it, I was in and out in 40 minutes. No problems at all. I paid $60 for the whole thing, (would have been $50 but I paid extra to get lifetime balance for the tires.)

Here’s a little tip: if you want to get lubed up (the car, not you) or get tire service like I did, go to Walmart early in the morning during the middle of the week. If your Wally World was anything like mine, you won’t have to face a Disney World type line, and you’ll be out of there before you know it. More importantly, the mechanics won’t feel rushed and they’ll be more likely to do the job right the first time.

So how are the tires working out? So far they drive nice and smooth on dry pavement. It’s the only way I can explain it. It just feels… smooooooth. As for road noise, initially it was a big letdown. I thought for sure the noise in the cabin would be whisper quiet, but I could hardly tell the difference. But then I realized I wasn’t listening to the radio as loud as I used to. In fact, I was now setting it a couple of bars lower than I used to. Because I’m hearing impaired, I’m not in a good position to really know how much the road noise changed, but luckily, I had an add on mic to my iPod at my disposal to record the noises for me. :-D

My iPod has a dock in the car, so I used the voice memo to make two recordings while I drove over a patch of really harsh road on my way to work, the first for the old tires, the second for the new Michelin rubbers. I couldn’t find software to compare the decibel levels, but I could still view the waveforms for comparison. Here’s a screenshot of the two for your perusal:

Notice how leaner the sound waves for the Michelin tires are.

Notice in the second graph for the Michelin tires the waveform is less filled in and more sporadic? That’s definitely telling and does indicate a marked improvement after all.

Still, because I like to burn money and because I hate loose ends, I’m going to do something funsie called Road Force Balancing. Basically this is considered the absolute best way to load balance the tires on your car, and just about anyone who’s had it done raves about it. There’s only one shop within driving distance of me who has the equipment to do it, so I’ll be setting up an appointment for next week. Usually these types of balancing jobs cost about $100, but it would determine once and for all whether the road noise I’m hearing is a result of the tires not being balanced properly. It does seem to happen more often than not, and based on my research people tend to blame the noise levels on the tires when in fact it turns out they just needed to be balanced better.

I’ll do a followup post on how the tires sound after rebalancing, then continue with my impressions on how the tires perform as I embark on my road trip.

Now all I need to do is find a girl to join me on a magic carpet ride.

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