just ordered 4 at Walmart for $115 each, free shipping.
seemed liked a really good deal to me! i've been watching these tires and the cheapest i could find them for was about $140-$145 a piece.
anyone have experience with these?
also, Cooper is offering a $100 rebate on these (gift card) for a limited time!
check out their website if you're interested...
Keep us posted on what you do and don't like about them; always appreciated! I'll be shopping very soon for a set and not sure what I'll get yet. Very good price you found indeed.
just had them mounted and balanced yesterday (Saturday)...
first impressions: pros- its a good looking tire, i like the side profile and the sporty lettering.
they are also very quiet and do seem to have a lot of grip (theres this bend on a local highway that i like to take at high speed when theres no other cars around - its a left, right, left, right two lane sweep - i took it at about 75 mph and the Coopers held without making a single squeak!
cons - i'm feeling a slight vibration around 60/65 mph. this very well maybe a balancing issue, i'll be going back to the dealership to see what they have to say about it.
these tires, atm at least, don't 'feel' particularly sporty. i mean they seem to have plenty of grip, as i mentioned previously, but they ride so smoothly (and quietly) that the feel of the car seems almost muted. of course a smooth ride is not a bad thing, i just remember having a little more feel before with my Yokohamas; and i assume the ride will only get more smooth after a proper break in of the tires.
steering feel also feels a little muted to me.
i'll keep posting updates. given that i only paid about $90 a tire for these Coopers (after all offers), i really don't have much if anything to complain about. i mean when the worst thing is 'the ride is too smooth'; that pretty much means everything is gravy so far (besides the vibration, which is most likely a balancing problem).
Update 1: so these tires feel extremely 'soft' to me, meaning they have a ton of grip and are very 'sticky'.
sounds good, but there are some caveats. first i can feel the 'softness' in the car's ride. the ride feels less firm and as a consequence less confidence inspiring. of course the MKS is meant to ride softly, and i never changed out the springs, but i don't like losing some of the firmness i had with my previous Yokohamas. now these don't ride as soft as the stock Michilens that came standard on the car, which made the car feel like it was moving on a cloud. i think the sidewall stiffness must be whats the difference here.
another consequence of the softness and stickiness is an almost sense of inertia i feel when initially accelerating. its a weird feeling i never felt before. the Lincoln technician said it might be because this tire is heavier than my previous tires. who knows...
the vibration is almost gone, i still feel something around 60-65mph, but that might be because i'm extra sensitive to anything ATM.
the technician did find a couple of things at issue when he did the second mounting, balancing, and alignment. turns out, the last dealership that rotated my tires somehow got one of the concentric rings for my wheels pushed into one another. so one wheel had two rings and one had none. this was another Ford dealer, so i'm pretty disappointed they messed that up. he also said there is a slight amount of play in one of the tie rods, not enough to change it out but he said he would recommend replacing both sides in the next 6,000 miles or so.
i'll update again later...
Going from a worn out tire. Meaning low tread depth. Then driving on a full tread depth new tire. They almost always feel squishy to me. Maybe this is what you are feeling along with a slightly less sporty tire.
Also might want to raise tire pressures a bit to 40 psi like FoMoCo did with his tires, and see how it feels.
Quote from: SHOdded on May 09, 2018, 12:50:47 AM
Also might want to raise tire pressures a bit to 40 psi like FoMoCo did with his tires, and see how it feels.
Yes, I was just going to recommend that. On my last car at the recommended 32psi the car felt really soft, I could really feel the sidewalls rolling over and deforming when taking a long sweeper on the way to work. Upped for 40-42psi and it did wonders. Tire felt much more solid and connected, and did not feel like it was going to roll off the wheel. MPG got better too.
Quote from: Macgyver on May 09, 2018, 12:16:33 AM
Going from a worn out tire. Meaning low tread depth. Then driving on a full tread depth new tire. They almost always feel squishy to me. Maybe this is what you are feeling along with a slightly less sporty tire.
thanks...
the zeons are actually supposed to be sportier than my previous yokohamas...
Just put these on my 2010 SHO. Really like them so far. Very smooth and comfortable ride. Not harsh, but still have a great feel of the road. Noise? Nothing but a little radial hum, not annoying. Jury is still out on how they perform when the snow flies. I live in a rural, hilly area with great roads and love these tires so far. Great price. Coming from Conti DWS06's. They were good. Looked cool.
alright, so update 2:
first, whats up everybody, haven't been on the site in a while...
so, my experience with these tires has not been good! after going to and from various shops and dealers, spending plenty of money (those dealerships and their diagnostic fees!!!) to figure out what the vibration was; turns out (after 3 road force balances) these tire were nearly defective!
first went to a Ford dealership (had some other things that needed fixing too), $800 later they say they can't do anything about the vibration because the tires are too far out of balanced. they said they checked the entire front end, the tie rods were good, brakes checked out, CV joints are fine etc; and recommended i go back to Walmart (where i got them initially installed) and put in a warranty claim for the ones that are defective. they only tried to road force balance two of them and found one to be 46 pounds out of balance and the other at 24 pounds out, too much to try and correct.
so i wouldn't have been so mad at the dealer, if:
1) one of the other issues (a blown fuse that stopped the driver's seat and steering wheel from moving, which they charged almost $200 to change!!!! because they claim they have to do a complete electrical workup to make sure its nothing more complicated) completely failed two days later! i ended up going to O'reilly's, brought a $5 fuse and they changed it for me! so far its holding up, so i'm not going to go back to the dealer unless it blows again and then demand they fix it at no charge besides parts that might be necessary.
2) they charged me $80 for just attempting to balance two of the tires w/o completing the job. the place that eventually ended up balancing the tires correctly (within spec after 2 attempts) only charged $40 all together!
3) . the ridiculousness of diagnostic fees! out of the $800 i spent, almost half were diagnostic fees, and the dealer claim they dropped half of the fees they were going to charge me out of courtesy!!! ridiculous AF!
so after the Ford dealer i ended up going to 3 more places; the Walmart that installed the tires (they claimed the tires came up ok on their balancer, they didn't have a road force balancer). the service manager, who was at least polite and attentive (took the car on a test drive after they tried to balance the tires), said that perhaps because i got size 255 vs 245 it was causing issues. so no luck there. i tried a small local place, really nice guys who looked the car up and down (for free, wouldn't accept any money from me at all!) and couldn't find a problem with the car (tie rods etc) but said he did feel a vibration on the highway.
so finally after back and forths with a Cooper rep, i ended up at a local Discount Tire who was a cooper dealer and had a road force balancer, thinking i would have to do a warranty claim. they tried to road force balance the tires, came up with out of whack numbers just like the Ford dealer, but they thought 20 or so pounds over was acceptable. after more discussion with Cooper i ended up taking the car back to Discount Tire to complete the warranty claim. the tech there said he was going to give it one more shot as a courtesy, since they had not written all the values down for the tires the first time (because they felt in the 20s was OK). IDK what they did, but they got them to balance out, finally. I was skeptical, yet when i took the car out to test drive it on the highway, the vibration was gone or pretty much completely gone, i'm so sensitive to anything now i feel the tiniest thing. but really, the car is driving well within standard atm.
So after all that, its safe to say I'm not the biggest fan of these tires.
they still feel extra heavy, like theres more unsprung weight at each corner. and now that the tread is down to 7/32s after only 8 months of driving (these tires are supposed to have a 60,000 mile tread life) the crazy grip they had initially is pretty much gone. just feels like a heavy (and sturdy) tire.
not exactly what i was looking for...
The Cooper folks should have done a warranty claim for you I think. I am glad Discount was able to resolve the vibration (sounds like you got a good tech working with you), but Cooper should take it on themselves to refund or get you new tires entirely, since even the dealership said there was NO problem. Just a customer service thing, really.
As far as quick wear, I will note that you see that with Michelin tires as well. The Premiere LTX, a CUV tire, wears down to 50% in the first 12,000 miles of driving. 60,000 mile tire. Fear factor sets in. BUT the crazy thing here, is that the tires live out the rest of the treadlife without issues. No loss of traction or handling, minimal loss of comfort. Different from your Cooper experience, just touching on the wear subject.
update 3:
so after about 800 miles or so, the vibration is back.
took it back to Discount Tire and they said the tires are definitely an issue, shouldn't have to be rebalanced after such a short time.
they're doing a warranty claim, but i refused to get more Coopers, so the dealer worked out getting a rebate (about $80 per tire) towards the purchase of another brand. i decided on some Contis DSWs, out of what they had available. they are $200 a piece, which is avg to kinda high price for these, but many of you have raved about these tires so I'm going to give them a try.
got to give credit to Discount Tire. to work out a rebate of about $80 per tire, when i payed only about $99 per tire (after original rebate offer from Cooper) seems like a good deal.
although i'd definitely rather have not gone thru all of this because of defective tires.
Hopefully the DWSs will treat me well.
i do think that getting the 255 vs 245 tread width might affect ride quality some, so its probably best to get the better tire brands when doing so...
Quote from: MeanKS on December 20, 2018, 05:41:36 PM
update 3:
so after about 800 miles or so, the vibration is back.
took it back to Discount Tire and they said the tires are definitely an issue, shouldn't have to be rebalanced after such a short time.
they're doing a warranty claim, but i refused to get more Coopers, so the dealer worked out getting a rebate (about $80 per tire) towards the purchase of another brand. i decided on some Contis DSWs, out of what they had available. they are $200 a piece, which is avg to kinda high price for these, but many of you have raved about these tires so I'm going to give them a try.
got to give credit to Discount Tire. to work out a rebate of about $80 per tire, when i payed only about $99 per tire (after original rebate offer from Cooper) seems like a good deal.
although i'd definitely rather have not gone thru all of this because of defective tires.
Hopefully the DWSs will treat me well.
i do think that getting the 255 vs 245 tread width might affect ride quality some, so its probably best to get the better tire brands when doing so...
That's an excellent deal and awesome that there's still some decent companies out there. Vibration issues can be very very annoying and frustrating. I am dealing with some on my truck. I bought some cheap tires, Atturo AZ800 275/60/20 and they just don't balance out. Ive already done one warranty claim on one tire. Now I'm considering its a bad wheel but I really don't think it's the problem. Then of course I read reviews...for the most part theyre good but theres one that says my tires are junk and will never balance out...should have bought better tires and saved money and headaches in the long run.
alright...
so the DWSs are fine. ride is pretty much back to normal and these tires have good grip.
the only thing is, I'm feeling what seems like extra movement in the front end, specifically the right front, when going over a series of bumps like on a cobblestone road.
thru all of the ridiculousness i went thru with the defective Coopers everyone said the front suspension is fine.
I'm thinking the car is due for a brake job. so i'm going to get that done soon and see if it relieves the extra vibration i'm feeling over bumps.
Glad to see progress made. So the movement is like a shimmy, a wobble,...? If it is only one side, could be tie rod or strut mount. Sway bar links if it feels across ge front end. The DWS is directional, but does not sound like a mis-installation issue. Maybe a rebalance in a few hundred miles will help
Quote from: SHOdded on February 08, 2019, 08:25:37 AM
Glad to see progress made. So the movement is like a shimmy, a wobble,...? If it is only one side, could be tie rod or strut mount. Sway bar links if it feels across ge front end. The DWS is directional, but does not sound like a mis-installation issue. Maybe a rebalance in a few hundred miles will help
i guess shimmy is a good way to describe it.
theres also extra noise when it happens, almost like a series of small bongs.
only happens on certain bumps, like a bad cobble stone road or bad potholes...