# What ECO tires have you replaced your stockers with?



## Eco (May 13, 2011)

I notice that I'm racking up the miles super fast on our Cruze, we love to drive it and it saves us quite a bit of money in gas from what we're traditionally used to.
I've never once re-purchased OE tires, I've typically found them to be overly expensive, and sub-par in each category (with the exception of road noise usually) compared to any other tire replacement.

I also have a 2002 Saturn SL2 that we're going to take a gamble on to see if it'll survive the investment of tires and brakes.

I've decided to go with a Bridgestone Ecopia EP100s (IIRC)? They were pretty cheap.

However with the Cruze Eco I'd probably be willing to spend a bit more when new tires are required. So I'm wondering, what everyone's experience here has been with their Eco tire replacement?

Reviews?


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## obermd (Mar 3, 2012)

Given my excellent experiences with Bridgestones I'll probably switch both my ECO and LS to the Bridgestone Ecopias when the time comes. How many miles do you have on your Cruze and what is your current tire depth?


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## CruzeEcoBlueTopaz (Jan 5, 2012)

Well I have put 36k miles on my Eco in the past 4 months and they still have a decent amount of tread and depth remaining. I would like to get at least 70k miles out of these tires and plan on replacing them before winter. When I do replace my Eco stock tires you best believe they will be with the exact same Goodyear fuel max tires. I should take some pictures of the tires tread and post them on the forums.


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## Eco (May 13, 2011)

Doc, We have about 22K miles on the car now, and I'm unsure of the tread depth, I'm sure it's fine for the time being, but there is no reason why I shouldn't start putting some money, I'll probably need new ones next year.

Doc, what were your experience with the Ecopia, and what modle tire did you use?


CEBT- Honestly these were the first set of tires I had thought about re-purchasing... Seriously. Hence my probing thread.


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## XtremeRevolution (Jan 19, 2012)

Eco said:


> Doc, We have about 22K miles on the car now, and I'm unsure of the tread depth, I'm sure it's fine for the time being, but there is no reason why I shouldn't start putting some money, I'll probably need new ones next year.
> 
> Doc, what were your experience with the Ecopia, and what modle tire did you use?
> 
> ...


You'll have a hard time getting an identical copy of them. They might be different from the retail version. I know for a fact they have significantly less tread. 13-14/64" from the factory instead of 20/64" retail. I have mine at 50psi and drive mostly in the city, and I'm down to 12-13/64" after ~7000 miles. By 10,000 miles, I'll probably be right at 12/64".


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## obermd (Mar 3, 2012)

Eco said:


> Doc, We have about 22K miles on the car now, and I'm unsure of the tread depth, I'm sure it's fine for the time being, but there is no reason why I shouldn't start putting some money, I'll probably need new ones next year.
> 
> Doc, what were your experience with the Ecopia, and what modle tire did you use?
> 
> ...


I assume you're refering to me. The md are my first and middle initials. I haven't driven on the Ecopias but I have driven almost 400,000 miles on other Bridgestones (Potenza, Turanza, among others). Everytime I try a different tire I end up back on Bridgestones. This is why I'm willing to give them a try. As for the Goodyear FuelMax Assurance, it appears that the type of snow you get makes a huge difference in handling. They work in dry snow like we get in Denver, but sciphi says they are worthless in the wet snow he has to deal with in NY state. My ECO MT had absolutely no problems in the few late winter snows we got in Denver (I purchased it in late January).

If I hadn't had such good experiences with Bridgestone I would replace my OEM tires with the retail version, which apparently has the same tread pattern but 3/32s more initial tread depth. These are the second best set of OEMs I've ever had.

Regardless of tire, make sure you get V rated tires. The Cruze ECO MT was clocked by Road and Track at 132 MPH on their test track. GM used an H rated tire for part of 2011.


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## jblackburn (Apr 14, 2012)

Check out TireRack's selection for the Cruze:

Tire Search Results

That link is set to include only low-rolling-resistance tires for a Cruze Eco, and the top-rated tires are generally great tires when I have gone with them in the past. Looks like a lot of the Michelin's made 8 or above, whereas the Goodyears are 6.5. The *MXV4's* are great tires for 90% of drivers (worlds above the Potenzas that came stock on my parents' Accord), but I still don't care much for their handling capability.

Xtreme, your OE tires are in that list.

I second what obermd said. I HATE H-rated tires so much. Their sidewalls are spongy and floppy and can turn even a car with a nice suspension into feeling like a Buick.


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## sciphi (Aug 26, 2011)

I'm thinking hard of going with the Michelin Primacy MXM4. They appear to be quiet, comfortable, and offer good handling. Based on TireRack testing, fuel mileage between those and the Goodyear Assurance FuelMax (retail version) is identical. So I may not lose any MPG in the process.


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## obermd (Mar 3, 2012)

I ran H rated tires on my Montana, but it's suspension was such that it floated like a boat anyway. The top speed of the AWD Montana was only slightly over 100 MPH, so V rated was overkill. Based on this max speed, S rated tires would be called for. However, it needed the H rated tires to handle the weight load the van was capable of handling.

The load rating of the tire is the number immediately before the speed rating letter. For example, my ECO MT has P215/55R17 94V and my son's LS has P215/60R16 94S. The 94 in the tire rating is the weight limit. In this case its 1477 lbs per tire. This includes the weight of the vehicle on the axle. The full table is at Tire Tech Information - How to Read Speed Rating, Load Index & Service Descriptions.

When you replace your tires you need to use tires that have the same or higher load rating and a speed rating high enough to handle the vehicle's top speed. The higher this number the higher the resistance to heat damage from normal driving.


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## jblackburn (Apr 14, 2012)

obermd said:


> I ran H rated tires on my Montana, but it's suspension was such that it floated like a boat anyway. The top speed of the AWD Montana was only slightly over 100 MPH, so V rated was overkill. Based on this max speed, S rated tires would be called for. However, it needed the H rated tires to handle the weight load the van was capable of handling.
> 
> The load rating of the tire is the number immediately before the speed rating letter. For example, my ECO MT has P215/55R17 94V and my son's LS has P215/60R16 94S. The 94 in the tire rating is the weight limit. In this case its 1477 lbs per tire. This includes the weight of the vehicle on the axle. The full table is at Tire Tech Information - How to Read Speed Rating, Load Index & Service Descriptions.
> 
> When you replace your tires you need to use tires that have the same or higher load rating and a speed rating high enough to handle the vehicle's top speed. The higher this number the higher the resistance to heat damage from normal driving.


My 1.4 LT has the S-rated Firestones as well. I hate them and can't wait til they wear out and I can put some better tires on it. No matter what I do with the tire pressures, the tires give in in corners and it feels like the nose of the car wants to go straight - even on highway off-ramps. They are also fairly noisy after some initial wear-in on bad roads with lots of patches, etc.

Usually (but not always), V-rated tires use stiffer belts and compounds that will last you less mileage, but provide a firmer ride and grip and withstand higher Interstate speeds with less wear than H-rated tires.


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## obermd (Mar 3, 2012)

jblackburn said:


> Usually (but not always), V-rated tires use stiffer belts and compounds that will last you less mileage, but provide a firmer ride and grip and withstand higher Interstate speeds with less wear than H-rated tires.



Interesting tradeoff thought. However, if you look at the V rated tires for the ECO they all top out at 65,000 mile tread wear. I tried 80,000 mile treadwear tires and lost a significant amount of traction when compared to the same tire make/model with a 65,000 mile treadwear rating.


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## XtremeRevolution (Jan 19, 2012)

The previously posted link doesn't work. Looks like autoguide.com detected the word "tires" in a URL and decided it was necessary to include its own URL in front of it. Can you post that again specifically using the hyperlink button in the formatting bar?


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## jblackburn (Apr 14, 2012)

Autoguide is being stupid and won't take the link no matter how I do it. 

So! Go to Tirerack => input Cruze Eco => View all tires => scroll to the bottom and select show ONLY Low-rolling-resistance tires. Should come up with 16 results.


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## NBrehm (Jun 27, 2011)

I'm def not going with another LRR tire, I REALLY don't like these goodyears and am not willing to risk another set of LRR tires from anyone at this point. I just delivered my 3rd set of Nitto Motivo's to a friend and so far everyone loves them, so i will most likely go that route. I'll take a slight loss in MPG (maybe anyway) to get better traction and handling


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## Eco (May 13, 2011)

jblackburn said:


> Autoguide is being stupid and won't take the link no matter how I do it.
> 
> So! Go to Tirerack => input Cruze Eco => View all tires => scroll to the bottom and select show ONLY Low-rolling-resistance tires. Should come up with 16 results.


Yes, thank you. This is how I was able to come up with the tire choice I came to.
I've purchased a set for my SL2 Saturn, I'll see how those turn and and then when the time comes see what my options are.
I was just hoping for some anecdotal evidence in comparison from stockers to an aftermarket set.


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## dannylightning (Jun 24, 2012)

mine is brand new so i wont need tires for a while but looking at tire rack, the tires for the cruze have pretty lousy reviews for the most part. the good year eagle GT tires seem to have the best reviews, 

that makes me wonder how people are driving that are wearing out their tires quickly. i drive pretty conservative most of the time and don't usually take corners fast, tires last me a long time. on my S10 ZR2 i had some 33 inch BFG mudders on there and had about 50k miles on those tires when i sold the truck, they still had about half tread life on them, most people were saying they got 30-40k miles on those tires before they were wore out.

i hope the stock tires do well in the winter, so far they seem great, hopefully they do well in the winter and last me a while, they do seem poor from the reviews, 

those good year eagle GT tires look like a good option, the Yokohama (LRR) avid ascend tires also have pretty good reviews. Michelin defender has good reviews too which is also a LRR tire.


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## obermd (Mar 3, 2012)

The last set of Eagle GTs I had were the OEMs on my Fiero GT in 1986. They were great on dry clean pavement. Put anything on the pavement (dirt, water, ice, oil, etc) and they were absolutely worthless. In fact, my experience with them was so bad that I was seriously concerned about the OEM Goodyear FuelMax Assurance on my ECO MT. Needless to say I was very surprised and pleased.

As for the reviews on Tire Rack, if you read carefully you'll see that some tires simply don't work on some cars. Most bad reviews for a specific tire are on one or few models. In addition I think there is a "robot" writing a bad review for each tire as there seems to be one review for each tire that is wriiten almost identically to one bad review for every other tire. I wish Tire Rack could filter reviews for a tire by make/model of the cars as well.


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## dannylightning (Jun 24, 2012)

the reviews on most of the tires i looked at do kind of scare you away. that would be nice if you could choose the reviews per model but than again there may not be any reviews for the car that you own. i notice there are only a few reviews per tire that i looked at, most of them were bad...

a tire from 1986 is probably way different than it is today.


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## jblackburn (Apr 14, 2012)

Tires do change over even just a few years, and there are certain types designed for certain applications. Cars sure have changed from 1986; why would tires be the same? I know Goodyear has very good wet-weather tires. The set I had on my Accord were pretty decent. That said, our SUV's (a Jeep, Escape, Expedition) came stock with Goodyear Wranglers in the past, and they're all worthless in rain and LOUD.

Yoko Avid's are amazing tires. I had a set of Avid Envigor's on my last sedan; liked them so much that I bought 4 more tires (at different times). Best all-season I've EVER driven on. Conti's DW and DWS lines (ContactPro and ExtremeContact) are also fantastic all-season tires. Both won't last you too long in terms of treadlife, though.


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## myselfalex (Jun 13, 2012)

What's the difference between all these Low Rolling Resistance tire names exactly? I see the Fuel Max OE tires, the Ecopia named ones, Green X, ect...

Are these just each brands title to their type of LRR technology? As they seem too varied to be just different ratings that are the same across all manufacturers.


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## jblackburn (Apr 14, 2012)

myselfalex said:


> What's the difference between all these Low Rolling Resistance tire names exactly? I see the Fuel Max OE tires, the Ecopia named ones, Green X, ect...
> 
> Are these just each brands title to their type of LRR technology? As they seem too varied to be just different ratings that are the same across all manufacturers.


Yes. 


Sent from my Autoguide iPhone app


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## obermd (Mar 3, 2012)

myselfalex said:


> What's the difference between all these Low Rolling Resistance tire names exactly? I see the Fuel Max OE tires, the Ecopia named ones, Green X, ect...
> 
> Are these just each brands title to their type of LRR technology? As they seem too varied to be just different ratings that are the same across all manufacturers.


Yes. Also the "OE" you see on some of the tires refers to the manufactor's "Original Equipment".


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## Eco (May 13, 2011)

Just a quick review.

I've thrown on a set of the Bridgestone Ecopia tires on my old 2002 Saturn SL2. My wife says b/t those and new front brakes the car feels 5 years younger.

It really is amazing just how much less rolling resistance these tires have. Granted I was coming from a set of bootlet tires that came with the car yeaars ago "Allegras" (LOL). You can easily feel the lower resistance to roll. It's too bad though this car's tranny algorithim works more like a manual as far as decel goes, it'll actually stay in gear and even DOWNSHIFT as you slow down, whereas many cars I've observed simply lets it sit in the highest gear the car can be in before it would stall (which it wouldn't through an automatic/TQ converter) so yuo could be coasting down a hill in another car like my old Aura XR 3.6 and it'll be in 6th gear until you touch the gas, it allowed it to roll for quite a long time.

Even without that though, I can already tell this vehicle will get much better fuel economy.

Review of the tires:

Noise - 9
Smoothness - 9
handling - 6 (tires are 185 R15)

With fuel economy improved for sure.

I couldn't say if these tires would be better than the stockers on the Cruze though because the platforms are only related in that they both use 4 tires to roll on :}

If you have a commuter car or some other moderate duty vehicle and you're looking to get some more fuel economy and smoothness, definitely try these Ecopias... Some of the reviews on there that are bad are explaiened later. 

One guy had a bad wheel bearing and thought it was his new tires for instance, and had gone back to edit the review's text.


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