Tired Tyres - Tread Timidly

One of the things that immediately stood out when viewing this R129 was a big bulge on the passenger side front tyre that seemed to be news to the owner. Neither he, nor us for that matter, had ever seen something like that on a car tyre before, but I did get bulges on my bike when trying to conquer high kerbs, so this one probably came from hitting one of the potholes peppering the local roads.

After googling the problem, all the advice could be summed up as DANGER - REPLACE TYRE! The owner offered to have it done for us, but since we were going to have the back tyres changed anyway due to wear, we thought we would take care of it ourselves and just change all four tyres. On the drive home it felt fine, so we weren't too worried when we couldn't get a time slot for another couple of weeks.

We took our time choosing the right tyres. Our R129 came with 18'' AMG II staggered wheels, with different tyre brands in the front and rear. Ideally, we wanted to have the same brand on all four wheels. We were not after a cheap option - what we wanted was something that can be trusted and of course something deserving of our precious Merc, as surely apart from all the safety concerns it would just be plain wrong to get cheap footwear for such a thoroughbred car.

We relied on EU tyre labelling to understand the fuel efficiency, wet grip and external rolling noise. You may already familiar with this, but for us it was something completely new (have to admit with shame this is the first time ever we were having tyres changed; Cars for Dummies, this is your target audience right here):

• Fuel efficiency was the least important criterion, rated from A (best) to G (worst). Let's be honest here, if we were worried about fuel consumption, we wouldn't have bought a car with a 5-litre engine. 

• Wet grip was very important - considering the amount of rain this winter, the roads were pretty much always wet. It is also rated from A to G, with the difference in wet braking distance between A and G being 18!! metres.

• Noise level was an important feature as well. Apart from personal convenience, a thing to consider is that a new noise limit will be introduced in the next couple of years and some of the tyres sold at the moment will no longer fall under that legal limit.

For more information on the EU tyre labelling, you can have a look here. 

When it came down to choosing a particular brand and model, we had a look at some tyre tests done by car mags, but, to be honest, I always doubt the objectivity of these. The most helpful resource was a website called Tyrereviews, where you can see a great scoring system as well as comments from users.

We were also not sure where to buy and have the tyres fitted - the options looked at included Kwik Fit, Asda and Blackcircles (affiliated with Tesco). Again, a helpful source of information was a review website - Trustpilot. As Blackcircles placed 5th on their list, it was a clear winner, with getting Clubcard points an additional bonus. 

So having examined their range and compared that to the tyre reviews, we settled for Goodyear Eagle F1 Asymmetric 2. It was available for both front and back, had very good user reviews and good scores on the EU tyre labelling. All of that didn't come cheap, so the total for tyres and fitting came up to around £750. Order completed, we started to count the days till our appointment at the garage.

In the meantime, we kept driving the car, and boy did that bulge start to make a difference. Even though the tyre didn't look flat from the outside, the ride worsened a lot. When turning left at low speed it felt like you were sitting on the alloy instead of the tyre with odd noises and dodgy ride. So if you see a bulge on your tyre, my recommendation would be to get it sorted ASAP.

When it was time to finally head to the garage, we were driving on pins and needles, worried that something bad was going to happen, so it was a big relief when we made it. No complaints whatsoever about service from Blackcircles - the correct tyres were there, the work was done quickly and the ride improved instantly. As it turned out, there was also a bulge on one of the back tyres that we'd overlooked, plus the guys in the garage discovered we were missing one of the bolts securing the wheel, so that's something else on our 'to get sorted' list now.

So far, very happy with our tyre choice: