Uniroyal Rainsport 3 -Verdict?

Uniroyal Rainsport 3 -Verdict?

Author
Discussion

NiceCupOfTea

25,280 posts

250 months

Tuesday 5th November 2013
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RS2s on my Saab 9000 for the last 18 months apart from 3 months of winter tyres. Probably the best all round tyre I have ever used and will be fitting a set to Mrs.NCoT's Qashqai in the next month, as well as my other Saab. In fact last winter I had an inkling that in cold (non snow) conditions I would have been better off with the RS2s than my 4 year old Nokian WRG2 winter tyres...

Studio117

4,250 posts

190 months

Tuesday 5th November 2013
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Eagle F1's are better in the wet and far far better in the dry.

g3org3y

20,606 posts

190 months

Tuesday 5th November 2013
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Studio117 said:
Eagle F1's are better in the wet and far far better in the dry.
What's the price difference?

Studio117

4,250 posts

190 months

Tuesday 5th November 2013
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g3org3y said:
What's the price difference?
It depends on the size. my car runs 215/45/17

On black circles the uniroyal are only £4 per corner cheaper.

Turkey

380 posts

183 months

Tuesday 5th November 2013
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Not too impressed with the Rainsport 2 tbh, hope the Rainsport 3 can deliver more. However, Uniroyal haven't impressed so far with the Rainsport 2 so I am going to try Sport Contact 5s shortly as these get good review, move from mid range to a premium tyre and see how they fare.

Fitted a set of Rainsport 2 to the front of the ZS Diesel after reading the rave reviews. They wore within about 5000 miles excessively on the inside AND outside edges, with about 5mm left in the centre. I had already pushed the pressures up over the book value by about 3psi as they felt a bit soft in the sidewall, so basically I think the tyre construction couldn't handle the weight of the Diesel lump up front (car weights 1300kg and the tyres did have the correct 88XL rating. So I switched the RS2s to the rear and the part worn Kumho KU39 to the front, the Kumhos are fine up front and have worn perfectly after another 5000 miles (alignment is spot on to give even wear).

I have found the cheap as chips Kumho KU39 to have more grip on greasy roads and in the dry, the Uniroyals were easy to spin up in moist conditions, a big surprise on a car with 205 width tyres and about 130bhp. The Kumho feel a bit numb and wear quickly, but in my mind are safer than the Rainsport 2s. Also on the Rainsport 2, the tread depth is huge, and this helps to get some decent mileage out of them (if you don't have excess edge wear like I did), but when new the tread felt unstable as a result.

If the Rainsport 3 give superb review I might take a punt in the future, but I found their predecessor to fall short of the hype.

zeduffman

4,054 posts

150 months

Tuesday 5th November 2013
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Turkey said:
I am going to try Sport Contact 5s shortly as these get good review, move from mid range to a premium tyre and see how they fare.
The 5s offer tonnes of wet and dry grip but they wear away very quickly. I might just break 10k miles on my set.

Turkey

380 posts

183 months

Tuesday 5th November 2013
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zeduffman said:
The 5s offer tonnes of wet and dry grip but they wear away very quickly. I might just break 10k miles on my set.
Thanks, is this on the R32? In which case this might offer an improvement for me compared to going through a set of Kumhos in 10,000 miles on a 130bhp Diesel ZS not driven hard very often. I imagine an R32 has twice the power and 4WD?

MC Bodge

Original Poster:

21,551 posts

174 months

Tuesday 5th November 2013
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Turkey said:
Fitted a set of Rainsport 2 to the front of the ZS Diesel after reading the rave reviews. They wore within about 5000 miles excessively on the inside AND outside edges, with about 5mm left in the centre. I had already pushed the pressures up over the book value by about 3psi
Add even more pressure -Experiment.

I've a set of Rain expert on my Mondeo diesel estate.

Grip is very good in all weathers, on muddy, bumpy roads and they are quite 'progressive', although when pushed *very* hard they do deform a bit, but they are on a big car (They're very good on our Fabia)

I have 37psi front & 34 psi rear, with even tyre wear across all tyres.

I'm considering Rain Sport 3's for the next set.

Edited by MC Bodge on Tuesday 5th November 23:41

Lowtimer

4,286 posts

167 months

Tuesday 5th November 2013
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Turkey said:
I have found the cheap as chips Kumho KU39 to have more grip on greasy roads and in the dry, the Uniroyals were easy to spin up in moist conditions, a big surprise on a car with 205 width tyres and about 130bhp.
I'm very surprised to hear this. I'm putting 300 bhp through a pair of 225/50 Rainsport 2 on the back of my 944 Turbo and the traction is superb, wet or dry.

MC Bodge

Original Poster:

21,551 posts

174 months

Tuesday 5th November 2013
quotequote all
Lowtimer said:
Turkey said:
I have found the cheap as chips Kumho KU39 to have more grip on greasy roads and in the dry, the Uniroyals were easy to spin up in moist conditions, a big surprise on a car with 205 width tyres and about 130bhp.
I'm very surprised to hear this. I'm putting 300 bhp through a pair of 225/50 Rainsport 2 on the back of my 944 Turbo and the traction is superb, wet or dry.
Kumho KU39 were not great in the wet when I had them on a previous car.

Kozy

3,169 posts

217 months

Wednesday 6th November 2013
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militantmandy said:
Run slightly higher pressures maybe? I have another set of wheels with Toyo R1Rs. Unless it was pishing it down I'd use those for any track days etc.
Yea higher pressures might work.

I can't run anything better TBH, I have to run standard wheels and list 1a tyres. I haven't come across a better choice than the Uniroyals TBH.

HannsG

3,031 posts

133 months

Wednesday 6th November 2013
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I have the RS2's on my car.

When i was doing my research it seemed they become very noisy over time. Can anyone attest to this?

MC Bodge

Original Poster:

21,551 posts

174 months

Wednesday 6th November 2013
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NiceCupOfTea said:
In fact last winter I had an inkling that in cold (non snow) conditions I would have been better off with the RS2s than my 4 year old Nokian WRG2 winter tyres...
Can of worms opened (4 year old winters may be past their best?) ....but I was also pleased by the Rain Expert in the cold, and pleasantly surprised by their performance in the snow.

All that jazz

7,632 posts

145 months

Wednesday 6th November 2013
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Turkey said:
Not too impressed with the Rainsport 2 tbh, hope the Rainsport 3 can deliver more. However, Uniroyal haven't impressed so far with the Rainsport 2 so I am going to try Sport Contact 5s shortly as these get good review, move from mid range to a premium tyre and see how they fare.

Fitted a set of Rainsport 2 to the front of the ZS Diesel after reading the rave reviews. They wore within about 5000 miles excessively on the inside AND outside edges, with about 5mm left in the centre. I had already pushed the pressures up over the book value by about 3psi as they felt a bit soft in the sidewall, so basically I think the tyre construction couldn't handle the weight of the Diesel lump up front (car weights 1300kg and the tyres did have the correct 88XL rating. So I switched the RS2s to the rear and the part worn Kumho KU39 to the front, the Kumhos are fine up front and have worn perfectly after another 5000 miles (alignment is spot on to give even wear).

I have found the cheap as chips Kumho KU39 to have more grip on greasy roads and in the dry, the Uniroyals were easy to spin up in moist conditions, a big surprise on a car with 205 width tyres and about 130bhp. The Kumho feel a bit numb and wear quickly, but in my mind are safer than the Rainsport 2s. Also on the Rainsport 2, the tread depth is huge, and this helps to get some decent mileage out of them (if you don't have excess edge wear like I did), but when new the tread felt unstable as a result.

If the Rainsport 3 give superb review I might take a punt in the future, but I found their predecessor to fall short of the hype.
I agree with some of this re the RS2. I had new RS2s on my mk4 Golf TDI and whilst they were generally very good in soaking wet conditions, they did nearly always spin up when giving it a few beans pulling away on wet and dry roads, especially so if just a bit moist/greasy. It got really annoying. The side walls are also extremely soft, making an already terrible handling car even worse (205/50/16). I flogged the car not long after some can't comment on longevity but I won't be buying them again.

MC Bodge

Original Poster:

21,551 posts

174 months

Wednesday 6th November 2013
quotequote all
All that jazz said:
they did nearly always spin up when giving it a few beans pulling away on wet and dry roads, especially so if just a bit moist/greasy
Really?

What were you comparing with? Racing wets?


griffin dai

3,194 posts

148 months

Sunday 10th November 2013
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I've just ordered a set for the front on my Saab, I can't find any reviews on these so it's another gamble I hope will pay off! Was looking for RS2's but Camskill haven't any in stock and the RS3's are only £75 in my size! Got to try them!

Previously had Kumho V70A's fitted which were leagues above anything else I've tried, never had a tyre like it! But the wrong load rating (90 instead of 94) so both tyres burst & died under 2k miles! Still awesome though, grip was incredible! You'd fall out your seat before they let go smile

jon-

16,496 posts

215 months

Monday 11th November 2013
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griffin dai said:
I've just ordered a set for the front on my Saab, I can't find any reviews on these so it's another gamble I hope will pay off! Was looking for RS2's but Camskill haven't any in stock and the RS3's are only £75 in my size! Got to try them!

Previously had Kumho V70A's fitted which were leagues above anything else I've tried, never had a tyre like it! But the wrong load rating (90 instead of 94) so both tyres burst & died under 2k miles! Still awesome though, grip was incredible! You'd fall out your seat before they let go smile
Kumho V70A on a road Saab? Sounds like a strange combination unless it's a track car?!

Anyway, let us know how you find the RS3, I can't wait until the reviews start to appear!

Turkey

380 posts

183 months

Friday 15th November 2013
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Very odd, it seems there are two camps on the RS2s, some who love them, and one or two like myself who didn't find them so great.

To answer some of the points raised in response to my earlier post, the Kumho KU39s are not a great tyre overall, but very cheap, and definitely have better traction on greasy roads than the RS2s I had. I was running my RS2s at about 35psi when I first noticed the abnormal wear pattern (2psi over book reccommendation), and increased this to about 37psi (4psi over book), but the wear continued the same pattern, with the correct load rating tyres. I wouldn't want to increase the pressures any more to be honest, as I've never had any other tyres on this car (had about 5 sets on the front in total) that needed a change in pressure to counteract abnormal wear.

griffin dai

3,194 posts

148 months

Monday 25th November 2013
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jon- said:
Kumho V70A on a road Saab? Sounds like a strange combination unless it's a track car?!

Anyway, let us know how you find the RS3, I can't wait until the reviews start to appear!
Trust me they were fantastic wink

They're only a 90 load rate though and my 9-3 needs 94 (never crossed my mind until they went) so they didn't last even 2,000 miles! They didn't break traction once in the dry no matter how hard I pushed it, great over summer. If they did these in 94 load I'd get them again no problem.

Ref the Rainsport 3's
I've had them fitted since Friday, done about 150 miles so far and they're really REALLY good!!! Give tons of grip in the wet, it's the first tyre I've had that gives me confidence on a wet day (400ft/lbs & fwd usually spins in the wet, no more!!) Really impressed with them. £75 a corner seems a right bargain!! Haven't even let go on a cold/icy 4:30am drive to work either so I'm hoping they'll be ok in the snow.

Definitely worth a punt if anyone's considering them....


A900ss

3,245 posts

151 months

Sunday 9th February 2014
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Any other users or Rain Sport 3’s that want to give their views on this new tyre.