Tiger paws could kill me if I let them

[eljefino]

Have some Tiger Paw Tourings on my beater camry. Matched set in 215-60-16. 5/32" remaining. Sipes aren't cut all the way down, and are gone, now.

So these tires are half worn, or, if you want to get into semantics, five of the eight 1/32nds of legal tread are gone.

A little slush on the road, still can see black tar, and I can pop the clutch at idle and they'll just spin. They understeer if I look at them wrong. ABS activation is a continuing rude surprise.

I have proper snows on my "real" car, so I'm spoiled. But I don't see how people can drive on these, at all, through a major portion of their expected lifetime.

If you want uniroyal tiger paws, swap out of them in the fall, I guess, if you live in snow country.

 

[04SE]

I love my Tiger Paw Touring tires on our 2002 Avalon, at least in this neck of the woods.

 

[Wolf359]

Around here 2/32's is considered worn out. So you've really used 62.5% of the tire not half. When you hit 5/32's that's about a little too low for snow, you've already hit that. Down to 4/32's for rain and I'd start thinking about replacing them before they hit 3/32's.

http://www.tirerack.com/winter/tech/techpage.jsp?techid=163

 

[slacktide_bitog]

For New England and Colorado, use Vredestein Quatrac 5 or Toyo Celsius year-round if you can't get real winter tires and need to use one set for the whole year.

Uniroyal is garbage despite being owned by Michelin (and they were even worse before the Michelin takeover)

 

[LoneRanger]

Tires make all the difference. My Soob is a beast for snow and deep slush with the Nokian WRG2's. Strangley, they tend to be a little more skiddy for lateral traction (i.e. sharp curves) on plain old wet asphalt however, even though they have a ton of siping that's still adequately deep.

 

[WiskyBadger]

Uniroyals are the worst. Our old Impala sucked with them, put on General Altimax and it improves greatly. The Uniboils weren't even half worn. Dad has some on his Trailblazer and says they suck on that too.

 

[RooflessVW]

My sister had Tiger Paws on her Rabbit. I always liked them.

 

[Mantooth]

I had a set and got around 60k miles out of them. I do remember the snow traction just being meh. If the snow got too bad, I just pulled the F250 out of the garage and parked the car.

Overall, I thought they were decent tires for the price. Couldn't say the same for the [censored] '08 Accord they were attached to.

 

[daves87rs]

Tiger paws can't handle snow-period!

 

[nthach]

Originally Posted By: slacktide_bitog


Uniroyal is garbage despite being owned by Michelin (and they were even worse before the Michelin takeover)

Michelin doesn't make most of the Uniroyal product line in the US or even in-house, it's outsourced to Hankook or a Indonesian plant. The OEM Uniroyals were made in the US.

 

[UG_Passat]

Most sipes aren't cut all the way down, which also includes snow tires. 5/32" (just under 4mm) is approximately depth that snow tires lose most of their grip compared to a new tire, which is would be recommended to replace them.

 

[Mr_Joe]

When I walk through the lot at work I peek at tires occasionally. Many people drive with poor tires, Winter too. I'd rather they not be around me in the road.

I don't think Tiger Paws age well, at least not when I had them OEM on a vehicle. I'd never intentionally buy them.

 

[IndyIan]

Tiger paws came on my 03 Tracker and they were pretty bad to start, with squealing in low speed parking lot maneuvers, and then got worse. Wet traction was a joke after the first couple years. Snow traction seemed to be OK at full tread depth but after a couple years we got real snow tires. The only positive was they were on track to go 120,000 miles, so I guess if you have a long commute where it never snows or rains then they would work for you.

 

[meep]

I've seen weird stuff with uniroyals. inconsistent - and the posts above sort of explain why- they may be produced all over the place.

Bought a used accord that drove great until I did its first rotation. Found it had one tiger paw that was so out of round you could see it with the naked eye. I idled the car in gear with the subject wheel spinning off the ground, about 1/2" above the garage floor. While spinning, I took a piece of "sidewalk chalk" and marked the high spot (half the tire) and then cut it down (off the car) with a handheld electric wood planer. Did this three times. At the highest, it was 1/8" of material.

It drove 50x better after that, but I didn't feel right about that and bought replacements.

 

[HangFire]

I had a set of Tiger Paws back in the late 80's.

I see nothing has changed.