wheel spinning

[ressla]

jus wondering if someone can help? ive recently got a gti which has 18 replica wheels and budget tyres on it. the car however seems to wheel spin in the wet like crazy and goin round a roundabout the traction control light on the dash seems to be flasing constantly when doing any kind of decent speed. the bloke i bought it from said that he's had it lowered too although i doubt it is to do with that and im guessing its maybe due to the cheap tyres. i have a bmw 116 also and that drives perfectly in the wet and has branded tyres. jus wondering if anyone can help on whether im right in thinking its the tyres or is there some other underlying problem?

thanks in advance.

[PabloGTI]

The first thing I would do is get them budget tyres off!!!

Branded tryes start at about £80 for toyos, £110 for OEM bridgestones or up to £150 for Really high spec.

Running a GTI on budget hoops is a false economy.

[ressla]

ur right pablo!!

its that ive jus bought the car and i dont mind if the problem is caused by the tyres as long as its nothing else which may cost an arm and a leg to sort out.

[PabloGTI]

I have the bridgestones on mine and i like `em, no probs with excessive wheel spin.

The only time I have used budget tyres is on a p reg fiesta (1.25) and that could spin its wheels in 3rd in the wet. They had no grip in the wet....or dry and sounds like what you are experiencing.

[TagnuT]

Budget tyres on a GTI 

They are the only areas of contact that your car has for braking and steering as well as acceleration. If your getting wheel spin all the time in the wet imagine what would happen if you had to make an emergency stop or had to take avoiding action to miss an object. The cars dynamics are up to the job, the tyres are the weak link. Get some decent boots on it.

Now where is TT im sure that he will have an opinion on this one.

Either that or you hammer it every where you drive...........(no offence) 

[Teutonic_Tamer]

Why oh fcuking why to peeps spend £20k or more on a car which was designed to run on specific high performance OEM specified boots, to then completely trash the handling, your own personal safety, and that of other road users - by fitting cheap shyte "nippon-no-grip" CRAP tyres.

Any person who does that should have their gonads removed by hand, and nailed to the nearest road side tree!

Get some decent boots - my personal recommendations would be Michelin Pilot Sport PS2, Michelin Pilot Exalto PE2, or Conti Sport Contact 3.

I know others have recommened Bridgestones, but I would strongly recommend NOT using them.  I have personally experienced truely shocking performance from Bridgestones, but also reasonable performance too.  Anthother poster here, Schrodingers Cat, if I remember correctly, also had a torrid time with Bridgestones on his GTI, which was transformed when he swapped them for Pilot Sport 2s.  I think Bridgestone can make a decent tyre (the S03 for one), but they suffer with very notable inconsistencies.  The RE040 was truely shyte, and IMHO dangerous.  The RE050 seems to be offering some quite different and opposing opinions.

[PabloGTI]

"nippon-no-grip" CRAP tyres.

You might wanna copyright that, or the chinese will be using it.

Perhaps they already are.

[RedRobin]

....I'm very much in agreement with what others have posted: Tyres are your only point of road contact and very important. I've had Conti's, Bridgestones, and now Goodyear Eagle F1's. I find the F1's streets ahead of the others for grip and traction in both dry and wet - I heard their good reputation but didn't expect them to be quite as good as they are. They're a little noisier on the road but who cares about that?

Wheelspin is avoidable if you learn how to feed the throttle progressively and I have an extremely throttle-responsive car which has taught me how to do it if I want to avoid wheelspin.

[wellsy]

I have 18" Mich PS2's on mine.   Sticks like shi* to a blanket, wet or dry.   

I also drive a mark IV TDI 150 with 17" Dunlop Sport SP01A.   I know the MK IV is a crap car handling wise compared to the MK V but the difference is night and day.

[Teutonic_Tamer]

"nippon-no-grip" CRAP tyres.

You might wanna copyright that, or the chinese will be using it.

Perhaps they already are.

It actually referrs to Jap tyres, and was a very common phrase used by motorcyclists in the 1980s.  In those days, if you fitted a Jap tyre, irrespective of the make, then you WOULD crash in the wet!  In those days, Avon, Pirelli and Continental motorcycle tyres were literally untouchable.  Even Michelin made poor tyres, but it is a very different story now.  Virtually all the major manufacturers make decent motorbike tyres.  My preference on my bike is Avon Azaro, and I don't like Michelin bike tyres, because whilst they give absolute shed-loads of grip, they don't give much feed-back on the limit, so it is "grip, grip, grip . . . more grip - slide" = many brown-trouser moments!