Goodyear Eagle RS-A's

[bustednutz]

Anyone ever use them. I can get a good price on them. The reviews I read on Tirerack say that they are at best an average tire with poor road noise.
Whats everyone think?

Its either those or a set of Kuhmo Solus kh16 tires.

 

[jorton]

I've never owned RS-A's but I did notice all Ford Police Interceptor's around here use them.

05 Ford Focus
I'm not 100% satisfied with my set of new Kuhmo Solus. They wander on dry surfaces and hydroplane on wet. The old Federal's didn't do either, but those only lasted 32,000 miles.

 

[CharlieJ]

They came from the factory on the Mazda3 with the 17 inch wheels. I still have the original tires on mine with 16K miles on them. I am only expecting 30K miles max from them. I will NOT consider them again. It depends on what kind of a deal you are getting that determines if they are worth it.

 

[Johnny248]

They are horrible. Have no tread life, are not a very good handling tire. I would not buy them ever unless someone was giving them to you.

 

[tomcat27]

they're not designed for long tread life. I cant personally speak to them, but a friend has them on his VW R32; modified, stage 2 blower - he drives aggressively and likes them. If you want a longer lasting tire, get the Kumhos. I have the 795's on my van and the 16's on my intrepid.

 

[SLCraig]

Junk.. worst tire I've ever had on a car overall.. I've had cheaper tires, which performed the same, but for half the cost.

They're bad, especially for the inflated price. Because you can get a good deal, it'd have to be a really good deal to make them a worthwhile buy.

 

[mechanicx]

Those tirerack reviews are baloney. They'll recommend a tire that rides way harder and noiser and claim it's better because of more mark up and customer reviews aren't as reliable as you'd think. The RS-A is a great tire if you want something that is performance oriented. Like someone mentioned Police use them all the time. For a performance tire they're actually pretty quiet and ride decent, probably better than most any performance tire, and have good snow traction. they do wear fast, but that's probably the compromise made for the rest of the performance. They're usually expensive so if you can get 'em at a good price, I say try them.

 

[HTSS_TR]

Goodyear Eagle RS-A is an old tire with old technology. Why not buy a newer design ? Kuhmo Solus KH16 is fairly old too, KH21 is newer.

 

[mechanicx]

Yeah but it's an oldie but proven goodie

. I guess if you can get a good price on them they'd still be a good choice.

 

[methusaleh]

As has been stated, they were OEM on CVPIs when I was a patrol officer a few years back. They were not, however, what my department ordered when it was time to replace. I believe we ran the RSAs for one year, regardless of mileage, and then switched the cruisers over to Potenzas. The difference was night and day. Frankly I hated the RSAs.

 

[FowVay]

I used them exclusively on my VW Golf and I loved them. They were priced right, gave great wet weather traction and they lasted 60,000 miles on each of the three sets I owned.

The only complaint was that as they wore/aged they would get very noisey. At the end of their service life it would sound like I had a bad wheel bearing. I never had a failure from these tires.

If you can get them for a decent price then I strongly recommend them based on past use.

 

[SteveSRT8]

absolutely the worst tire I have driven.

Original equipment on my Neon R/T and my SRT8.

Anything else is probably better!

 

[PRND3L]

Originally Posted By: FowVay
I used them exclusively on my VW Golf and I loved them. They were priced right, gave great wet weather traction and they lasted 60,000 miles on each of the three sets I owned.


Wow, this is completely opposite of my experience. RS-As were orig. equipment on my vibe, and had terrible wet traction right from the start. Lasted 38k miles, and that was pushing it. OTOH, I did also find them to be very noisy.

Never again.

 

[mechtech2]

My ZX2 came with RSAs. They were often put down and condemned .
I found them to be great for 20,000 miles. Then they got hard and more slippery wet or dry.
They are not a high performance tire, but a good general purpose kinda all season tire. They are high priced for what you get, IMO.

 

[WishIhadatruck]

The reason you get some people that like them and some hate them is because they are an OEM tire. Each size for each OEM can be noticably different depending on what the OEM wants. Most people don't like OEM tires because the OEM has different priorities than most customers. They want something that gives a nice impression when you test drive it and gives good fuel economy. Long life is often not a consideration at all. Wet weather traction is often lacking as well, partly due to the low rolling resistance design. Unless you know someone that has the same model # you are buying and they are happy, there is a good chance you won't like them based on the reviews out there. I personally wouldn't buy them.

 

[bustednutz]

Well, I can also get the Bridgestone Potenza's for $95/tire. Strongly considering those as well. The tirerack has over 2000 reviews from customers on the GY RSA tire and it gets pretty average to poor ratings. But for the price its probably not worth it. I think I'll step up another $120 and get something better.

 

[Colt45ws]

I got a set from my work for $25 a tire to put on my moms car. Seem alright.

 

[mechanicx]

Originally Posted By: WishIhadatruck
The reason you get some people that like them and some hate them is because they are an OEM tire. Each size for each OEM can be noticably different depending on what the OEM wants. Most people don't like OEM tires because the OEM has different priorities than most customers. They want something that gives a nice impression when you test drive it and gives good fuel economy. Long life is often not a consideration at all. Wet weather traction is often lacking as well, partly due to the low rolling resistance design. Unless you know someone that has the same model # you are buying and they are happy, there is a good chance you won't like them based on the reviews out there. I personally wouldn't buy them.


This is a very good point. Also I forgot to mention but the newer RS-A also came out with an improved version called "plus" or something like that and increased the treadlife rating from 260 to something like 340.

 

[mechanicx]

Originally Posted By: bustednutz
Well, I can also get the Bridgestone Potenza's for $95/tire. Strongly considering those as well. The tirerack has over 2000 reviews from customers on the GY RSA tire and it gets pretty average to poor ratings. But for the price its probably not worth it. I think I'll step up another $120 and get something better.


I still want to say though that those customer reviews are about worthless. These customers must be idiots or maybe they are parroting what Tirerack feeds them, i.e, Tirerack hypes up and pushes the tire with the highest mark up, and those dummy customers go along with the ratings. For example they use to rate the BFGoodrich Traction T/A very high. It does give good all season traction but it was a pricy tire for what you were getting, rides very hard and is noisy, and can get even more noisy as it wears. But the idiot customer reviews hardly mentioned its hard ride and noise and they'd say it was a top 5 tire! There are other examples of Tirerack and its customers placing a tire in the top 5, that in reality was a poorer perform than some of the others.

 

[wantin150]

I have driven a couple of HUNDRED THOUSAND miles on Goodyear RSA tires, 225-70-15 and 225-60-16. Both sizes were on patrol cars. Those tires were used and abused with numerous rapid accelerations and decelerations, turning around on cars, wheel spin, etc. many times a day. Obviously treadwear suffered. They NEVER once let me down. They even worked well during the one night of wet snow we had (6 in). I drove 125 miles that night with NO problems not initiated by me (tried to spin it around in the road for fun, it wasn't). I would usually get 20k on a set. Most of my tires were replaced due to nails or foreign objects. At the Government rate, they are more than worth the money. At a retail rate, not so much. Although I had very good experience with them, there are much better tires for much less money.