Hi both, One item to point here. The EU label indicating the noise level is for exterior noise. This is the noise which you will hear if you are passing by the car with the engine switch off while coasting. What most users want is good interior noise which depends mostly on your car's sound absorption and also a bit from the tire. OE manufacture's do demand this kind of data especially when they pair their tires with new vehicles but sadly this data are always not made public.

Noise is a delicate topic as the noise generated by the tire depends on the softness of the compound, tread pattern, road surface and load on the tire. In general speaking there is some correlation from exterior noise & interior noise which might give you a hint which tires are less noisy. But generally tire with less grooves are better for noise.

Have you experienced tires which are really noisy till it annoys you?

Import tax I read somewhere it says 5%. Mark up for tires on average is 60%. But of course this is skewed towards the high inch region where sometimes it is double the amount.

These are usually fine as they tend to come out naturally. If you are hardworking of course it would be nice to pick them out but i predict the influence is very minimal.

I would use the same recommended pressure as your stock 185/55R15 tires. Unfortunately as this is an inch up you would need to find the right balance and sometimes it could be tricky. The range of being ok is extremely huge. So as long your tire is not off 5 psi + or - you are safe.

1). Can I buy a different brand/model tire?
---> For sure you can buy another brand. Its a free market. You do not have to stick with the OE tires.

2). New tire should fit at Front or Rear?
---> There is 2 main points when it comes to this.
1st: Putting new tires on the rear would be beneficial especially during aquaplaning situation. Your higher tread depth would allow you a higher slip speed compare to the front tires. Also if you have an emergency with your lower tread depth tires in the front, you can steer them. For safety reasons you should always place the new tires in the rear

2nd: Putting new tires on the front make sense from a wear point of view. As you are most likely driving in a front wheel mode for your Tiguan, this would mean that your front tires will wear faster and balance your wear rate in the rear at one point which allows your to prolong your time till the next tire change.

So based on these 2 points, you should balance between your requirements. If you do travel > 80 km/h during rainy days with big water patches you should fit it on your rear. Of course you can always drive slower and avoid aquaplaning and set your new tires to your front to have more "value"

3). Any recommendation of tire good for dry and wet? Hopefully can match MC6's performances.

Michelin Primacy 4st 235/50R18 730
Continental UC6 235/50R18 540
Kumho Ecsta PS31 235/50R18 468
Continental Max Contact 6 235/50R18 550
Yokohama Advan Fleva V701 235/50R18 538

I had a quick look on my price table and the above are some of them options. MC6 is one of the best in wet but if you are looking for something better, I would recommend Primacy 4st. You can check out the head to head comparison here

Nice observation. I cover the topic of inch up pricing here

I hope that it answers your question.

I did a detail comparison here

Hopefully it helps

Hello, when you say makan do you mean there is no more tread depth? (1.6mm) ? Would be nice if you can either take a picture or measure the tread depth in all sides (shoulder center shoulder)

When I look into Subaru Forester, it seems that it is a AWD configuration. Do let me know if this is the same for your car. If its a AWD setup, rotating your tires does help at all. For your shoulder wear issues, this is quite common in SUV configuration but not as extreme as you said (1.6mm on shoulder and still have 50% in the center) So you might want to check your car camber setup to see if anything is wrong.

A detailed analysis can be done if you provide more data

When you dont feell anything at all then balance is right

With a 4 wheel drive configuration, yes Its a no brainer. Put the new tires on the rear.

This post has been edited by epjx31: Jul 25 2022, 11:21 PM

When you rotate, did you not balance it?

Steering vibration could mean a lot of other things but since you rotate it just before might be worth to check it out.

The link pretty much sums up the key ideas. Wet braking performances deteriorates as the tread depth gets lower. So you need to balance between what safety margin you need. Driving your tires down to 1.6mm with risky wet driving behaviors is not the best idea.

I honestly have no clue about Falken FK510 as there is not much public available data.

Based on my price table, here are some of the options.

Kumho Ecsta PS31 215/45R17 308
Goodyear Assurance TripleMax 2 215/45R17 308
Toyo Nano Energy NE03 215/45R17 311
Continental UC6 215/45R17 340
Yokohama Advan Fleva V701 215/45R17 345
Continental Max Contact 6 215/45R17 358
Michelin Primacy 4st 215/45R17 460
Michelin Pilot Sport 5 215/45R17 480

If your budget allows of course the best is Primacy 4st. However Continental's UC6 at RM 340 sounds like a bargain to me.

So some basics 101 about tread pattern.

for wet & dry grip, the effective contact area is the main driver. the rubber compound usually dominates and nothing much the pattern can do besides providing surface area.

While for aquaplaning the way the grooves disperse the water is highly crucial. You will normally see good aquaplaning tires with V shapes pattern and it is also made "directional" in place of asymmetrical

Pattern is one of the main contributor to noise. The more void you have the nosier your tires are. Something like mud terrain tires vs UHP tires. The difference is huge.

I would say if you size has a CC6, it should be the best in comfort & noise

I had a quick look at their exterior noise performances and surprise to see dunlop sp 050+ sport maxx is rated better than Primacy 3 rft.

Run flat has an extra rubber cushion on the sidewall so that it can withstand the load of the car for certain amount of time after losing pressure. This influences the low frequency range of noise & which is mainly subjective aspect. This could be felt if you are a sensitive driver but most common drivers do not notice this.

We know that the higher your rim size the more expensive your tire will be. Check out this table here. So you can expect a cheaper price.

I explain the effects when you inch up your tire here. The comfort level of your tire is related to the tire's construction. So different products with different target requirements will vary. But if we are just talking about size differences, in general the higher the sidewall the better your comfort level as you are able to flex more as the tire is going through obstacles. the good thing about down sizing is that your sidewall height has to increase to compensate the outer diameter. So you are effectively having a higher sidewall height which is good for comfort.

I had a quick look on my price table & your sizes are mostly the UHP or touring segment tire where comfort is not the main target. I would go with Michelin Primacy 4st as the best bet. There might be cheaper options where comfort is indirectly better as a by product of being non competitive in wet or wear. I hope this helps.

If we are just only talking about comfort & noise MC6 performed very well in comfort from the press test here against Primacy 4. Also from P7 Cinturato comparison against Primacy 4 we know Primacy 4 has a much better subjective comfort. So MC6 would be ideal when it comes to your requirements.

depending on which tire company are you talking about. Ling Long & Double Coin are quite solid but of course they do not solve target conflict at a high level compared to the premium brands. If budget is a concern, you would rather the by tier 2 brands from the premium manufacturer like Dunlop which Continental owns for Malaysia.

You can download most of the data here

However this is not the complete one. The only way to get the complete item is through the EU label database which you can obtained the API officially.