I'm looking at set of 215/40/17's for a set of 17x7.5 rims for my 99' Integra. The tires are Nan Kang. Tread wear 340, Traction A, Temp. A, Speed rating HR. I read in "Super Street" magazine that the "H" rating is for speeds up to 130 mph and the "R" rating is for speeds up to 106 mph. Is there such thing as a combination of speed ratings? Sounds fishy to me. Any input would be greatly appreciated. If you have experiance with these tires and other tires let me know your opinion. I'm on a tight budget, and my rims should be here by the the end of March/beginning of April. So I'm lookin' to make a purchase soon. Thanks.

 

i have never, EVER, heard of a company called Nan Kang. :eh:

 

Nor have I.....

 

Me neither. That's why I'm asking. The ratings sound ok. and the price is right. I just don't wanna end up with some junk that's gonna peel apart when I'm turnin'.

 

i had nankang sr1's. from experience, i do know they are better than kumho ecsta 712's.

 

Check 'em out. The tread pattern looks pretty sweet.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=6782&item=24063022 61&rd=1

 

are you judging tires by how sweet its tread pattern looks? :eh:

 

Just for your info, the tire is "H" rated, the "R" means it's of radial construction.

 

I've heard of them. I'm guessing it's a korean brand or something similar to Kumho. If you just want to slap a set of tires to go with your wheels, then go right ahead. I would just advise not to do any "performance driving" with these tires.

 

If you want something cheap and don't care about the actual performance of the car they're not a bad choice, just don't expect anything amazing out of them. At least they'll take a while for you to wear them out.

How much are you looking to spend for the set of tires?

The cheapest tire I would recommend in that size is the Kumho 712, which runs $83 each at tirerack.com. They're a good performance tire with predictable handling and good resistance to hydroplaning. The rubber compound is kind of hard so they don't have huge quantities of dry grip, but they're not bad.

Moving up in price and performance you have the Yokohama AVS ES100, Yokohama Parada Spec-2, Dunlop FM901 and Sumitomo HTR Z II. All of these are about $10-$15 more than the Kumho 712 and will provide a bit less tread life in exchange for a bit more grip.

Tirerack.com is running a special on the Dunlop SP Sport 9000 which will out-grip all of the other tires mentioned so far, $95 a piece in your size. That's a pretty hot deal.

Continuing up in price (and once again performance) at about $115 a piece we have the Kumho Ecsta MX and Goodyear Eagle F1 GS-D3. These are all-out performance tires and will give you very high levels of grip but not that great treadwear or noise characteristics. Just for point of reference these are about a full "step up" from the AVS ES100 et al, with the Dunlop SP9000 sort of bridging the gap between the categories.

So there you go, tires on a budget. Sort of.