Buying tires with lower speed rating

[stranger706]

Soooo my Focus came with Y rated summer tires (186 mph) and just for fun I'm looking around at what I could get for replacement. If I stick with the Y rating that severely limits tire choices and frankly I don't want or need a Y rated tire. The car is a daily driver with no mods and will not being seeing any track time.

Will tire shops install lower speed rated tires or are they too afraid of being sued? I will be staying with the OEM tire size and load.

In the past I've always gone up in speed rating from the OEM tires...kind of weird now to be wanting to find a lower speed rating.

 

[NMBurb02]

What the car came with isn't as important as what the owners manual/door sticker specify. What do those say?

 

[Kruse]

Most shops will have no problem putting on a tire with a lesser speed rating.
Proof of this would be WalMart jumping at the chance to put on some really cheap GoodYear tires.

 

[stranger706]

Originally Posted By: NMBurb02
What the car came with isn't as important as what the owners manual/door sticker specify. What do those say?


They specify exactly what the car came with...Y rated summer tires. Why would that be different?

 

[krzyss]

How low do you want to go?
The speed rating of course!

Krzys

 

[stranger706]

Originally Posted By: krzyss
How low do you want to go?
The speed rating of course!

Krzys


H or V...something that isn't rock hard.

 

[PandaBear]

Most large franchise / chain wouldn't do it for liability reason (even though we all know speed rating has nothing to do with causing accidents).

If you bring it to a mom and pop they will have no problem mounting it for you.

I'd not go lower than H, haven't had good experience with any lower than H rated tire on traction.

 

[The_Jeff]

I worked at a VIP tire (local chain) and their brass hemmed and hawed and finally decided they sure will stick lower speed ratings on.

Another potential out for you is if the base Focus takes 118 mph tires and your service writer somehow pushes it through.

 

[Wolf359]

I've had Goodyear Tripletreds on my Taurus. They had them in T speed rating which was good for 118 mph and an 80k treadwear rating. On the higher speed rated ones, forget if it's H or V, they only give you a 70k treadwear warranty. With the T's I've gotten 60-70k out of them, but I didn't go down to 2/32's, maybe I could have gotten 80k out of them if I kept them that long. They were fine in the snow and rain.

 

[Andrew1972]

A decent performance H or V rated tire will suffice. The issue with S type tires is the handling turns to mush.....

 

[nthach]

I had Costco put H-rated tires on, factory speced V-rated but my car ain't seeing north of 100 any time soon...

 

[SwampSurvivor]

I think they only get upset about size

 

[Eddie]

Most important, is that you don't use a LOWER load rated tire. Ed

 

[HTSS_TR]

Tire with higher speed rated usually has better traction which will give you higher lateral acceleration and shorter braking distance.

Focus ST is higher performance version than base model, I wouldn't go with less than H rated, preferably V or W rated.

 

[SteveSRT8]

No respectable shop with any credibility will sell you lower rated tires. The only way you should be able to pull this off is to put the car up on blocks and bring in the wheels yourself.

Or do the online ordering thing, but the shops still won't usually mount them. Their liability is high in this case.

Good luck...

 

[Chris142]

Went through this with my jeep wrangler. It came with tires rated for something like 149mph. Really? 149mph in a wrangler?

 

[Padawan]

How would a shop's liability with regard to speed ratings be any different than when they're installing a set of winter tires on the same vehicle?

 

[slacktide_bitog]

You got an ST, not a regular base model Focus. You know what that car is about. Normally I'd say, yeah it's fine to downgrade, but it's hard to sympathize since you went out of your way to get the high performance model. You can probably get cheap tires that have the required rating.

It's not illegal to use a lower speed rating, but most shops won't do it, for fear of getting sued. There are two loopholes around the restriction, though.

Many people have had success by taking the wheels off the car and carrying them in. Since they're not on a car, there is no speed rating minimum rule.

Another less-used loophole is the new "all weather" tires, like the Nokian WRG3 and Vredestein Quatrac series. Since these tires have the mountain-and-snowflake symbol, they are legally considered winter tires, so shops are more willing to use a lower speed rating. The reason they're willing to do this on winter tires is because it's understood that people don't drive as fast on snow.

 

[oldhp]

+1 on taking them off and buy whatever you want on "your" car.

 

[Kuato]

What's the top speed limited to in the owner's manual? Show THAT to the tire shop.